


we are oceans (controlled by the pull of another)

by HomebodyNobody



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Found Family, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Superheroes, Telekinesis, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29116449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomebodyNobody/pseuds/HomebodyNobody
Summary: “JJ,” she whispers, quiet enough that only he can hear.“Yeah?” he responds, and his hand stills as he lays it flat against her back. The full contact of his palm is warm and sudden, and a clear picture of herself fills her head, only she looks like she’s been dipped in liquid sunshine. She tells herself it’s the afternoon light through the classroom windows, that JJ’s closer to them, that it has nothing to do with the way he sees her.“Could you think a little quieter, please?” she asks--JJ and Kiara have superpowers and are trying to track down and rid Kildare of the Phantom, the elusive drug lord that runs the illegal import/export enterprise around the island. They find out some terrible secrets, and a lot about how they feel about each other, along the way.
Relationships: JJ & Kiara & Pope & John B. Routledge, JJ Maybank/Kiara Carrera, JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks), Wheezie Cameron & JJ
Comments: 24
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 'i will just write a fun little superhero oneshot' they said  
> ...when will I learn  
> I did not finish this on time so it is being separated into two parts I will have the second up as quickly as I can, apologies.

Graffiti is art. At least, that's what teenagers like to think. It takes skill, and practice, and looks pretty splashed across brick and cement walls, so it must be art, right? The Sheriff with a cup of coffee in her slender hand disagrees, frowning up at the green and blue words high up on the alley wall. She knows the kids on this side of the island, knows that they’re stir-crazy, reckless, and bored. There’s no after-school programs here, no boys and girls club or scouts. There’s just the families that rule Figure Eight and the children of the people who work for them, let loose as maids and mechanics, secretaries and valets all work late. 

“Hey, Shoupe!” She calls back to the car, and her deputy climbs out -- a pudgy man with graying hair and an oversize mustache. She doesn’t like him much, but no one really does. She’s used to him, at least. Doesn’t really know what she’d do without him, unfortunately. “You seen anything like this before?”

Shoupe adjusts his utility belt and leaves his hands on his hips, squinting up at the dripping paint. “Veritas et Honos,” he sounds out, “The Roman gods of truth and honor.” The Sheriff raises her eyebrows, incredulous, and Shoupe shrugs. “My wife’s a history teacher.” Peterkin didn’t know that, somehow, even though she’s been working with Shoupe for years. 

She levels him with her cool, expressionless gaze, perfected over years in law enforcement, and he fidgets under her scrutiny. There’s been something off about him, something she can’t put her finger on. She pays so little attention to his behavior, usually, used to the way he always seems to fade into the background, barely competent but not failing. Just keeping up with quotas in their tiny county. She’s never paid much thought to Shoupe, and lately, she’s been starting to think that might have been a mistake. 

His eyes flick between his superior and the paint splashed across the side of the abandoned gas station. They’re just on the edge of the Cut, close enough to the subdivisions that Figure Eight -wannabes felt the need to complain. They’re on their way back from investigating a B&E, and she’d recognized the spiky font and flashy colors from the very thorough report filed the previous day by a homeowner who lives nearby. She’d stopped out of idle curiosity, maybe, as to what the words might mean. This isn’t the usual tagging or profanity that decorates every flat surface across the Cut, or ends up splashed across private yachts in the dead of night, scrubbed off by the very kids who probably painted it. 

This piece is filled with bold hues, shadows and complex lines. It took time, and, as she stares, Peterkin can almost imagine the silhouette of the desperate, lonely teenager, a duffel bag gutted, spray paint scattered at their feet, a can hanging from their fingers. She grew up on this island, too, knows the simultaneous fear and awe of the unknown, knows how the adolescents here cling to home while wishing so strongly to leave it. 

“We’ll let the community service kids clean it up,” Peterkin says, turning from the wall, watching Shoupe duck back into the car with relief, sweat beading across his pale forehead. 

They buckle their seat belts and Peterkin reverses, both cops ignoring the red phrase underneath the two names.  _ Veritas et Honos _ the picture reads,  _ ut vinceret  _ \-- come to conquer. 

* * *

Pope only knows she did it because there’s still paint on her wrists, faded and scrubbed at, but not quite gone. He spots it at lunch, when she rolls up her sleeves to tuck in to her pasta salad. Annoyance and exasperation threatens to boil over as he recognizes the tell-tale crescents of blue underneath Kiara’s fingernails, the smudges of green on her wrists and forearms. “Kie,” he sighs, and she looks up at him, faux innocence twinkling in her brown eyes. 

“What?” she asks, fork frozen halfway to her mouth. JJ and John B watch, rapt, ready for the confrontation to play out. JJ teases and John B stumbles blindly into arguments, but Pope is the only one actually brave enough to start fights with Kiara, and the only one stupid enough not to tap out from them. 

“I told you to cut it out with the street art,” he hisses, leaning across the table so she’ll hear. JJ snickers and cuts his eyes to John B over his monster. It’s all he has for lunch, and Kiara keeps leaving her reusable beeswax bags open in his general direction, hoping he’ll take the hint and snag a couple of carrots or berries. JJ keeps stealing John B’s fries, instead. 

Kiara looks offended, but satisfaction and pride sparkles beneath the exterior. “Street art is my medium, Pope. It’s my craft. How dare you suggest I give it up?” 

Pope rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean, Kie,” he says, tired of the same disagreement over and over. “Cut it out with the Honos and Veritas stuff. You’re gonna get caught.” 

“I think it’s cool,” JJ interjects, and Pope glares at him, just like he does every time. “Kie’s talented as fuck and a badass, why shouldn’t she show off?” John B nods in agreement, and Pope sighs, dropping his head into his hands and grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

“Thank you, JJ,” Kiara says, and he grins, sipping his drink. 

“You’re not helping,” Pope says to the table. 

Kiara returns to her food, still playing dumb. “I’m just supporting our local crime-fighting duo, Pope. I thought you would approve.” 

JJ practically spits across the table. The thing is, JJ and Kiara are Veritas and Honos. The names, of course, were Pope’s idea. Kiara is Veritas, inspired by her telepathy -- when she touches someone, she can tell what they’re thinking, and, if she tries, suggest a few things. She doesn’t love the second part of her powers, avoids using it as much as possible. She’s also telekinetic, which took her a while to get under control, and is the reason that the Chateau has several swathes of spackling and fresh plaster all over the living room. The tree in the front yard is a different story. 

JJ discovered his super strength at the worst possible time. They were playing with an old frisbee one afternoon, and John B hiked it a little too high, getting it stuck in the branches of the sprawling maple that shaded the lawn of the Chateau, the one that knew their bare feet and reaching hands like it knew the ground beneath its roots. They were standing under the branches, contemplating how to get it down, and it was decided that JJ would put one foot in Kie’s hands and the other in John B’s, and, together, they would shove him as he jumped as high as he could into the tree. Pope, of course, had gone to get the ladder. 

He came back just in time to see JJ jump out of Kie and John B’s hands and about fifty feet in the air. They were all taken aback, but JJ most of all. He came crashing down through the branches and somehow did not die after landing directly on his back in the hard-packed dirt, his new abilities lending themselves to increased durability. None of them relaxed until he breathed out a very defeated ‘ow,’ and slowly sat up. 

What followed was weeks of excitement and, at Pope’s insistence, testing. So far, they hadn’t found JJ’s limit. Theoretically, he could lift just about anything he wanted to -- and he tried almost everything he came across, audience or personal danger notwithstanding. They also found out he has superhuman reflexes, proved at an afternoon in the batting cages when he’d stuck his hand between a baseball and Kiara’s face at the exact last minute. Aim, reaction time, hand-eye coordination, all improved beyond any professional athlete or human ability. 

Kie’s powers were harder to test, and, after Pope insisted she guess the number he was thinking of and she reluctantly laid a hand on the side of his neck, her eyes shot open and she jerked back like she’d been burned, refusing to test her telepathy any further. The telekinesis she enjoyed testing perhaps a little  _ too  _ much, and, when it’s just the four of them, enjoys making random objects float along behind John B’s head, laughing maniacally as he whips back and forth like a dog hunting for his tail. 

“Don’t you think it’s weird?” Pope asks, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “I mean, you guys  _ are _ Veritas and Honos.” JJ finally takes one of Kie’s blueberries, but instead of eating it, he flicks it at Pope's forehead with nothing less than deadly accuracy. Pope closes his eyes, summoning patience as berry pulp drips down his face. 

“Say that a little louder, would you?” JJ says casually, taking another sip of his energy drink and attempting to look nonchalant -- something JJ Maybank has never and  _ will  _ never accomplish in his life. “I think Devil Spawn over there didn’t hear you.” 

He is referring, of course, to Sarah Cameron, daughter of developer and real estate mogul Ward Cameron, archenemy of Veritas and Honos. Well, technically, The Phantom is the archenemy of Veritas and Honos, kingpin of the criminal underworld that pumps drugs into the Cut and steals the future out from under kids like JJ, Kiara, and their friends. But JJ has strong suspicions that they are one and the same. He just can’t prove it. Yet. 

John B looks up, a rare expression of hurt on his gentle face. “Sarah’s not devil spawn,” he says politely. 

Kiara sneers, stabbing her fork into her lunch with a little too much gusto. “I beg to fucking differ,” she mutters under her breath.  _ Something _ happened between Kiara and Sarah freshman year -- whatever it was, she refuses to tell the boys any details. 

“Seriously,” John B insists, and all eyes land on him, surprise from Pope, and mildly sadistic glee from JJ, ready to watch the fight unfold as Kiara’s annoyance shifts from Pope to John B. “Mrs. Golebieski assigned new chem partners last week and she’s really…” John B’s eyes finally find Kiara’s face, and he swallows the last word. “Nice.” 

“Maybe at  _ first _ \--” Kiara hisses, and Pope rolls his eyes. 

“Can we stay on topic?” he interrupts. JJ’s smile drops, disappointed that he’s been deprived of his fun. Pope turns back to Kiara, staring pointedly at the side of her face when she refuses to look at him. “You’re gonna get caught.” 

Kiara sighs, reluctantly moving on from the discussion of the potential of Sarah Cameron being devil span and finally looking up at Pope. “You need to relax,” she says, slapping JJ’s hand away from her container of Oreos. She twists one open and hands him the side without the cream, second nature, and he takes it, pouting slightly but eating it all the same. “It’s just to get our names out there.” 

“Names?” Pope says, and the stress in his voice holds no relevance to the urgency of his topic, as it’s usually there. Kiara thinks Pope’s going to have premature ulcers. “This is seriously about the  _ names _ ?” 

“You came up with them,” JJ points out, and John B nods. “Besides, Kie’s got a point. The  _ Chronicle _ is still calling us ‘unknown masked teenagers’ and that like, seriously lacks cool factor.” 

“Yeah but you guys are  _ already _ vigilantes,” Pope insists. “Extracurricular criminal activity is definitely frowned upon. I just think --” 

“Shut up, Pope,” JJ says, in the tone that usually indicates that everyone else is thinking it, too, and the others return to their lunches. Pope’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he rolls his eyes and gives up. After a moment, JJ flips his phone out of his pocket and checks the tide, and a debate starts about skipping fourth period to catch a particularly excellent swell, (John B and JJ are for, Kiara and Pope against) and the argument is forgotten. 

The bell rings, and they split for their respective math classes, JJ and John B to pre-calc, Pope to AP Statistics, and Kiara to AP Calculus. 

Later, JJ throws himself down into the chair next to Kiara for the last class of the day. He is, at least, completely dry, so, unless he spent extra time with his head under the hand-dryers in the bathroom (which isn’t like, unprecedented), he probably didn’t skip math to surf. The class is Myth and Legend, so neither of them feels particularly motivated to pay attention. JJ tosses his feet up on the desk and pulls his phone from his pocket, playing a game one-handed, the other arm laying across the back of Kiara’s chair. Unconsciously, she leans back into it, and he absentmindedly fiddles with the end of her braid, his fingertips brushing the skin bared by her halter top. 

His subconscious hums happily, and she almost answers before realizing it’s his thoughts, not his voice, calling her name. She can’t tell exactly what’s going through her mind, not unless she tries, and she doesn’t want to violate JJ’s privacy that way. Mostly it’s just colors and feelings that she gets from him, when he’s not really paying attention. Golden hour yellow and sunrise orange, she’s learned, are the colors he associates with her, and they’re almost always accompanied by an all-consuming feeling of warmth. It’s not weird, when he does this, because Kiara likes to know that he’s her best friend, and that he cares. But still, she always feels bad listening in, when he has no idea how much she knows. 

“JJ,” she whispers, quiet enough that only he can hear. 

“Yeah?” he responds, and his hand stills as he lays it flat against her back. The full contact of his palm is warm and sudden, and a clear picture of herself fills her head, only she looks like she’s been dipped in liquid sunshine. She tells herself it’s the afternoon light through the classroom windows, that JJ’s closer to them, that it has nothing to do with the way he sees her. 

“Could you think a little quieter, please?” she asks, closing her eyes out of instinct and then regretting it as the image takes over her field of vision. He freezes. 

There’s an odd moment where his thoughts fill with brown bolts of fear before his walls slide up again and the warmth retreats. “Sorry,” he says, his casual tone a little forced, a little scared. His fingers pick up the tail of her braid again, and he winds it through his fingers, calloused fingers catching on the fine strands. 

Kiara worries, sometimes, when things like this happen. Not that JJ is hiding something from her -- she knows he wouldn’t attempt anything as stupid as that -- but that the warmth that rises in his mind every time their skin brushes may have a deeper, more terrifying gravity. She shuts off the thoughts as soon as they step to the forefront of her consciousness, blocking them from being shared with him, unwilling to confront them, herself. 

She’s thought about it, of course. JJ. JJ and her. Not on purpose, or anything. Her mind just ends up there, sometimes, when he smiles, or runs his hands through his hair, or shrugs in that way that he does, his head jerking with the motion, characteristic and minute and entirely his. Sometimes, when she’s high and he’s fuzzy around the edges, golden in afternoon or silver and surrounded by stars, she even thinks about pressing her lips to his, wonders what his pink, perfect mouth might feel like under hers. He’d taste like weed, or like mint and nicotine, or maybe even gummi bears, his favorite munchie. Maybe he’d even kiss her back, his rings tangling in her hair, and -- She shakes her head to clear it. She’s got too much trouble dealing with other people’s thoughts and feelings to start being fucked around by her own. The idea is too comfortable, accepted too readily, for how impossible it is. JJ and her? No way. 

Right? 

Kiara sits up, hoping that JJ didn’t catch any of that, his fingertips still brushing her spine occasionally as he fiddles with the end of her braid. She flips open her notebook and tries to focus on what Mr. Feingold is saying, because JJ sure as hell isn’t going to take notes and, in fact, is probably going to ask for hers, later. 

The outfits, admittedly, are a travesty. JJ keeps pushing for cooler ones, bringing stacks of comic books to Pope’s workshop in the old boathouse as ‘inspiration.’ He wants some ‘Captain America type shit’ or ‘maybe Hawkeye, cause his doesn’t have stupid fucking sleeves.’ So far, all they’re working with is repurposed sportswear, JJ wears his old, solid black soccer shorts with the school logo ripped off and compression pants (that he hates) underneath, a regular black thermal shirt on top (which he also hates). Kiara wears an old pair of leggings and one of JJ’s old soccer sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off, his last name on the back blacked out with gaff tape they pilfered from the theater department. She had to use his because all of the girls sports splash their goddamn logos all over everything, and she didn’t have a solid black one of her own. Their masks (another thing JJ hates, but that Pope insists on for sake of ‘security’) are cheap plastic ones from Amazon, and the elastic bands do weird shit to their hair. 

The first time they suited up, JJ had looked into the mirror and said, rather like a little boy disappointed with his halloween costume, that they looked like burglars from a kids’ cartoon. John B hadn’t helped matters by laughing so hard he cried. The only semblance of tech they have are the bluetooth earpieces repurposed as a comms system, and Kiara’s in-progress gauntlets, apparently meant to enhance and hone her telekinesis. She doesn’t have to use her hands for guidance for little things, but Pope is hoping that with the gauntlets, doing things like lifting cars might get easier. 

The thing about Kildare is that there isn’t a lot of obvious crime. Most things are low-level, drug deals and home invasions, and they do their best to stop those as safely as they can, and without police interference. They usually know the people involved, or go to school with their kids or their cousins, know that they only do what they do because they’re victims of circumstance. JJ had proposed the idea that they let whatever robberies may happen in Figure Eight to go as they might, but Kiara had reminded him that the police usually actually  _ do something _ about those, and it was better to be thwarted by Honos and Veritas than let an impulsive mistake land a teenager in jail for the rest of their lives. 

They’ve delivered a few criminals to the steps of Kildare PD, mostly dealers that sell to kids and every sex offender they hear about, usually beat to shit with a confession taped to their chest. Those nights are the most rewarding, but the hardest to shoulder. JJ always tries physical intimidation, first, but he has to hold back so he doesn’t accidentally  _ kill _ somebody, and it usually ends with Kiara having to touch them, using her powers to hunt for the truth in their fucked-up, tangled minds. She hates that part. It makes her skin crawl, having to put her hands on monsters like them. 

JJ always holds her, afterward, once she’s scrubbed every trace of them from her hands. They sit on the screened in porch of the Chateau and she sits with her back against his chest, his arms securely around her, his face pressed to her neck and her hands over his. She drowns herself in his mind, losing herself in his memories of their friends. JJ’s thoughts are always golden on those nights, shining and warm. He focuses on the good things for her, this she knows. There are darker corners, filled with fear and anger, that she sees at the corners of her vision, like long hallways branching away from the space where he holds his consciousness. He never talks about what might be hiding there, but she knows he gets lost down those halls, sometimes. It is in this silence she feels the closest to him, letting him take on the burdens of the horrible things she’s learned, showing him without having to repeat any of it out loud. He holds her so tightly she knows that he will always put himself between any threat of danger and her. 

“Are you okay?” JJ asks, pulling her from her thoughts. 

“What?” she responds, tuning back into the world. His fingertips are just resting on the skin exposed by the back of her tank top, a tenuous connection, rough skin against smooth, light and ready to be broken as soon as she says the words. He tilts his head, just barely, knowing he can’t explain completely in this classroom, surrounded by people as they are. He doesn’t have to. Her mind settles and focuses, and she notices that the corners of him are stained with indigo, her own introspection bleeding through. 

“Oh,” she says, realizing. “Yeah, no I’m --” she smiles, and it’s false, but she rolls her shoulders to shrug off his touch. At the very thought, his hand drops to the back of her chair. Still close, but separated by the thin fabric of her shirt. “I’m just thinking.” He doesn’t look like he believes her, but then Mr. Feingold shoots them a look, and his mouth shuts and she straightens up, ever the picture of an excellent student. 

He doesn’t say much for the rest of the period, but she attributes that to his investment into his MergeDragons camp, rather than anything between the two of them. JJ’s attention span and the functioning of such is a complete mystery to Kiara. He hasn’t finished a book since ninth grade, he jumps approximately 8 steps ahead in any given conversation, and yet, she’s watched him contribute thoughtfully to a discussion of the Hades and Persephone myth while never taking his eyes off of his game of temple run. (Mr. Feingold was less than amused.) Later, when she’d marveled to him about it, he’d shrugged in that strange, oddly jerky way he does, and explained that he’s heard her talk about it enough to have at least one coherent thought about it. 

After school, Kiara heads to the Wreck for the closing shift, and JJ goes to kick around with John B or whatever else it is they do while Pope and Kiara work and study and they… don’t. The small restaurant is already deep in the weeds by the time she gets there, and Brianna hands her an apron with a grim smile, saying little other than what section she’d be working for the night. By the time she and Gio lock the back door, she’s about to drop, she’s so tired. But she’d told JJ that they would patrol tonight and she still has math homework and an english essay to write. At this estimate, she probably won’t get to bed until at least three, and she has to be up at seven for school. 

Gio lights a cigarette and heads toward his motorcycle, and Kiara waves as she climbs into her SUV. She checks her phone. It’s just past ten, and she’ll have to end patrol sharply at midnight if she wants to be able to finish her homework. It’ll be a fight, of course, because with JJ it always is. He loves being Honos, fully and truly able to inhabit his power, take back some of the control that has been wrested from him over and over again. She remembers the night they left Barry handcuffed to the bike rack in front of the Sheriff's station, the look on JJ’s face as he backed away from his father’s dealer, the satisfaction and triumph in his sharp blue eyes. 

“He won't be able to hurt anyone again,” he’d said as they walked back to where they’d hidden the car. “Not for a long time.” She hadn’t said anything, just reached out and taken his hand, let him step into her mind as she was flooded with the taste of victory, bittersweet, touched by anger and trauma and fear but rich and fulfilling, all the same. 

Her phone lights up in her hand. 

**_MB JayJank:_ ** yo u done yet? 

**_Kie-Lemon:_ ** yeah gio and I just locked up 

**_MB JayJank:_ ** ready to be  🦸♂️s???

**_Kie-Lemon:_** yeah lol i’ll be there in a few

She smiles, despite herself. Ever since they discovered their powers, the superhero emoji has taken up permanent residence in JJ’s recently used. 

He wasn’t even supposed to be with her that night. She’d been monitoring a turtle’s nest near one of the university buildings, and the night they were due to hatch, she was there, to fight off gulls and crabs and make sure all the babies made it to the ocean. JJ had been suspicious of the weather, even though it had been clear all day, and he insisted on coming along. Just as she had started shepherding the baby turtles into the water, a storm rolled in, sudden and furious. JJ had vaulted himself out of the car and sprinted down to the beach as rain began to pound the sand. But Kiara wouldn’t leave, resolute on getting the entire nest safely to the ocean. While they argued, lightning struck the building just down the beach. The last thing Kiara remembers is a ring of green light rolling out of the windows and growing closer until it surrounded both of them, blinding and strangely painless. She’d woken up in the hospital, overwhelmed with worry and unsure of why -- until her mother finally let go of her hand. 

It took her a while to figure out the exact mechanics, how to protect herself and keep her own thoughts carefully guarded. The telekinesis didn’t manifest until a few days later, when she had gotten in a stupid argument with JJ -- about what, she doesn’t remember -- and every item that weighed less than a pound in the living room of the Chateau was suddenly floating around her. She hadn’t noticed until JJ went completely silent, which she had momentarily counted as a victory, before noticing the ashtray and the remote hovering behind his head. That, at least, had been easier to control. 

JJ’s already dressed by the time she gets to the Chateau, playing hacky-sack in the dirt driveway with Pope, illuminated only by the dim, buzzing front-door light. His face lights up as she pulls up, and he lets the small bean bag drop instead of kicking it back to Pope, who levels a glare at the back of JJ’s head before picking it up. Kiara climbs out of the driver’s seat, greeting JJ with the usual handshake, catching the buzzing orange of his excitement with the brief touch. Pope jerks his chin up in greeting, and she nods back. 

“Just let me get dressed,” she says to JJ, who’s bouncing on his heels at her side like a little kid. They keep all their gear here, safe from the prying eyes of parents who care too much and the suspicious hands of a father who cares too little. John B’s dad is in the kitchen when she walks in, and he grunts a hello over his bowl of cereal, half-awake, Big John has been working the night shift at the museum, lately, coming home as John B leaves for school. He’s used to his son’s friends being in and out so frequently there’s almost a wind tunnel between the front and back doors, teenagers whirling through them, crashing and cooking and showering before taking off again, feeling more at home here than anyone else. John B is in the living room, and he raises a hand in acknowledgement as she passes, his eyes barely leaving the cartoon he’s watching. 

John B’s room looks like a hurricane has ripped through it, but Veritas’ outfit is still shoved in the bottom drawer, along with her duffle full of spray paint, and she changes quickly, shoving her shorts and uniform t-shirt into the side pocket. Big John looks up as she crosses back to the front door, pointing his spoon at her. She stops in her tracks, her heart rate picking up at the idea that he might finally be objecting to their flagrantly suspicious activity. 

“Saw your piece from the other night,” he says, and she nods, biting her lip, cutting her eyes to John B, who hasn’t noticed anything wrong. “Looked good.” John Routledge II is a man of frustratingly few words. 

“Thanks,” she says, careful, measured. 

“Just stick to the Cut, kid,” Big John adds, and Kiara relaxes, barely. He’s not admonishing her for doing something illegal, just warning her to be careful. “Don’t get any closer to where someone might care.” She nods, and Big John nods back, before returning to his breakfast. John B finally sits up, looking between his friend and his father, catching on at the last moment. Kiara rolls her eyes and waves him off before rejoining JJ and Pope in the front yard. 

JJ’s face falls when he sees her bag. “C’mon, Kie,” he whines, again, not unlike a child, “you said we could actually do shit tonight.” 

“Untwist your panties, Honos,” Kie says, the use of his alter-ego’s name so casual it makes Pope hiss in a breath through his teeth. She bumps her shoulder into Pope’s. “And you, oh king of worriers.” Her upper arm, bared by the cutoff sweatshirt, brushes just below the sleeve of his t-shirt, and for an instant, she can feel his anxiety in her own chest, forest green, deep and solidly rooted. She worries about Pope, sometimes, when she gets these small glances into his head. He takes half a step back, the movement unconscious -- or maybe not. Ice forms in a sharp dagger between her ribs in the way he jerks away from her, but he’s been this way since she told him about her powers, wary and vigilant of any potential of bare skin touching, protective of his feelings and secrets. 

“Don’t get caught,” he warns, trying to inject levity into his tone, knowing he’s hurt her, even unintentionally. 

JJ, bless him, has missed all of it, and he taps his fist against Pope’s, grinning. “No promises!” he says, like he always does, before darting toward the car. 

“Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid,” Pope adds, and the gentle kindness in his brown eyes are apology enough. 

Kiara grins, wide and mischievous, her own anticipation starting to build, despite the exhaustion tugging at her. “No promises,” she says. 

They listen to the police scanner for at least an hour, but the chance of anything happening that they can get to in time to prevent is close to nothing, on an island this small, so they end up where they usually do -- parked outside of the glow of the streetlights in the high school parking lot on the beat-up laptop Kiara pilfered from her mom’s pack-rat office, using the school wifi to try and track down the Phantom. 

This is JJ’s least favorite part of the job, and he usually spends it the way he is tonight -- feet on the dash, tuned into the police scanner, fiddling with something she’s not sure where he got and generally being annoying. She’d be lying, of course, if she said she didn’t love these nights, the way this has turned into a space that belongs only to them, a liminal space between real life and the fantasy they live out, dark and close and quiet and beyond words. 

She has her feet in his lap, and he picks at the soles of her boots while she traverses their digital conspiracy wall. They’ve hit somewhat of a block when it comes to the dealer with a monopoly on the drug trade in and out of Kildare. They’d found out his alias only the week before, with the interrogation that preceded the dumping of Barry outside the sheriff’s station. JJ’s been excited and on edge ever since, sure that they were about to crack something wide open, but she can tell he’s losing hope, burning out and slowing down, the way he does when things don’t automatically go his way. 

It’s not his fault, and that’s something she’s had to learn after years of friendship. She used to get frustrated, watching him get so easily bored after seeing him so excited about a new idea, but she knows it’s just the way he’s wired. It tests her patience, having to constantly keep prodding him back onto the path they’ve chosen, but it’s just another part of him, another facet of JJ she’s come to accept. 

She’s flipping idly through their (her) excel spreadsheets, lists of dealers, what they sell, when and where and how long, who they get it from, how it gets to the island. There’s still holes in the fabric, but as she scrolls through pickup locations, something about the addresses catches in the back of her mind. The lines refuse to connect, just tangle together, and she’s about to ask JJ where they might be able to spread out and mark up a map when he abruptly drops his feet from the dash (consequently letting her legs fall from his lap) and leans forward in his seat. 

“Hey do you know -- Jay, what the fuck?” she asks indignantly. He’s peering through the windshield at the front doors of the school. 

“Is that Wheezie Cameron?” he asks. She looks, and -- oh fuck. It is. 

“What is she doing here?” Kiara says, closing the laptop and taking her legs off of JJ, turning back towards the wheel and leaning forward herself. As they watch, Wheezie pulls her phone out of her back pocket and makes a call. Evidently, no one picks up, because she tries two more numbers and sighs in frustration before pacing back and forth in the small puddle of light fighting against the dark. 

“Do we help her?” JJ asks quietly, and Kiara can’t help but feel surprised, especially after his vehement renunciation of Sarah Cameron in the Cafeteria earlier that day, supposedly for being the daughter of his prime suspect. It might also have been, she reminds herself, because  _ Kiara _ hates Sarah Cameron. 

“Let’s just wait a sec,” Kiara answers, wrapping her hands around the steering wheel and gently drumming her thumbs against it. Wheezie taps her phone against her lips, considering, and then bites her lip and makes one final call. Whoever it was doesn’t pick up, and Wheezie looks young and afraid in the dim, yellow light. 

“Superheroes can give freshmen rides,” JJ says, attempting to keep his tone light, even as Kiara detects real worry simmering underneath. He’s like this, with kids, always wanting to help. Even before they had powers, he was constantly kneeling before crying children on the beach or at the store, offering to help find their parents, wrangling Kiara into helping him so it was obvious he wasn’t a threat. “Right?” She doesn’t say anything, and feels JJ’s eyes on her, his body humming with a nervous sort of energy, anxious to do something as she considers. 

She was friends with Sarah when they were Wheezie’s age, and Wheezie was almost always in their business any time they spent afternoons at the Cameron house. Usually, their meager disguises aren’t an issue, a deterrent against someone attempting to describe them rather than any barrier against actual identification. The flimsy plastic masks and black clothing don’t mean anything here, and Kiara is worried that Wheezie will recognize them. If Ward really  _ is _ the Phantom, this might spell actual trouble. 

“Kiara,” JJ prods, annoyance building in his voice, and panic rises in her chest. She doesn’t want to fight with him, not about something like this, but she doesn’t want to put Honos and Veritas in danger, either. She’s debating if they could just follow her home when the three juniors that had been hotboxing their shitty Nissan pathfinder on the other side of the parking lot clamber out of the car in a haze of smoke and a tangle of limbs. JJ tenses beside her, his hand on the door handle, watching intensely as they approach Wheezie. 

“Oh, this is bad,” Kiara whispers under her breath. 

“Yeah, fuck no,” JJ says, and is halfway out of the car before Kiara can stop him. 

“JJ!” she hisses, “Honos!!” She has to scramble out of the car, stopping him before he reaches the circle of the streetlights. Grabbing his shoulders, she can feel his muscles flexing under her hands, untold power rippling beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. “Honos,” she says, using his hero name to try and get him in the right mindset. “She’ll recognize us.” He wets his lips, looking rapidly between the group of boys and Kiara. The stoners have reached Wheezie now, and her nervous laughter drifts through the dark. 

“She’s in trouble, Kie,” he says, but doesn’t break out of her grip, even though he certainly could. This is a choice, he understands, they have to make together. He’s not charging headlong into something without knowing that she’s going to back him up. She looks over her shoulder just in time to see one of the older boys take a step toward Wheezie, his hand reaching for the end of her hair, and revulsion surges in the bottom of her throat. When JJ lunges forward in response, she lets go. 

Ideally, of course, there would be a plan, but JJ just charges forward and Kiara can’t help but follow. The fight starts before she can try any attempt at diplomacy, JJ’s hand landing heavily on the shoulder of the tallest creep. She sighs, and follows suit, spotting a large rock and using a flick of her hand to send it hurtling into the stomach of another. It knocks him down, leaving him breathless and scrambling backward. She lifts a few smaller rocks to hover behind her shoulders, ammunition, should she need it, but the last boy sees them and runs, taking off back toward the car. The one she hit with a rock follows suit, and the third struggles in JJ’s grasp. 

“Hey, motherfucker,” JJ says cordially. “You weren’t bothering my friend here, were you?” The kid shakes his head, clearly terrified, and JJ releases his hold on the back of his shirt. “Good,” he says. “Now get the fuck out of here.” The guy is running before JJ can even finish his sentence. 

Kiara lets the stones drop, approaching a shaken Wheezie with gentle outstretched hands. “You okay, kiddo?” she asks, half her attention still on JJ, who may or may not still go after the would-be delinquents. Wheezies eyes are huge, and she stares as the boys pile back into their car and peel out of the parking lot. 

“Yeah, yeah --” she sighs, even as her voice shakes. “I’m okay.” Kie puts her hands on the younger girl’s shoulders, and Wheezie reaches up unconsciously, wrapping her hands around Kie’s wrists, hanging on for dear life as she spirals back down from the highs of panic and fear. Her terror stains the edges of Kiara’s vision, an impossibly dark blue-black, echoing and deep, the color of children’s fears, of storm clouds and bedrooms at night and deep water. Wheezie swallows, and Kiara takes a deep breath, calming her own heart rate, letting white noise wash over both of them, trying to calm Wheezie down without letting her know that she’s in her mind. 

JJ watches, his left hand shaking back and forth at his side, an anxious tic he’s had as long as she’s known him. He’s eyeing the parking lot, the security cameras by the school entrance. “Veritas,” he mutters, and that’s how she knows that he’s nervous. She usually has to remind him to be sure not to use their real names. He tucks his lower lip between his teeth, the way that she usually does -- a habit that started as hers, but now they share. She knows why, without having to ask. They’re exposed, at risk, and they need to get Wheezie out of here -- but she’s smart, and Kiara knows that. She’s not going to let two masked strangers put her in a car and take her to a secondary location. 

Kiara rubs her hands up and down the younger girl’s arms while she struggles with what to do. She needs Wheezie to trust them, to keep her safe, but taking off her mask, especially with the suspicions she and JJ have about Ward, might put Honos and Veritas in danger. When Kie looks back at Wheezie, she’s back in her body, brown eyes still wide but calculating, looking between the two teenagers, adding up the variables. And then -- 

“Kiara?” 

* * *

“This is bad,” Pope says, pacing across the porch. 

They’re back at the Chateau, having explained the situation to Wheezie in the car. They just told her the basics. That they have powers and what they are, and then, when she nagged, how they got them. They didn’t tell her that their ultimate goal is bringing down the Phantom -- who they’re fairly certain is her dad. John B had let them in, and while he seemed excited at the prospect of a new member of the team, Pope seemed… well.  _ Distressed _ , Kiara thinks, is the best way to put it. 

“It’s not great,” Kiara admits. She’s sitting on the old ratty couch on the screened-in porch, the one that smells like weed but is still the comfiest place she’s ever taken a nap. 

“How did you get outsmarted by a twelve year old?” Pope asks, one hand braced across his forehead, his eyes closed. He looks like he might be praying for strength or patience. Or both. She’s seen this expression a lot, from him. 

“I’m thirteen.” Wheezie protests, and Pope almost jumps, like he’d forgotten she was there. 

“You’re in high school!” John B points out. He’s got one hand in a goldfish carton (one of the big ones from Costco), and Wheezie gestures for it. He tilts the open top toward her, and she digs out a handful. 

“I skipped a grade,” she says casually, before shoving as many as the small crackers in her mouth as humanly possible. 

“That’s pretty dope.” John B admits, and Wheezie pushes up an eyebrow, like she’s watching a particularly amusing puppy. 

“Can we focus, please?” Pope groans, “What are we gonna do about this?” he asks, looking up and gesturing to Wheezie in an exaggerated manner. . 

“She’s a person, Pope,” JJ reminds him, looking surprisingly rankled. 

John B jumps in, ever the peacemaker. “She won’t tell,” he insists. “Right, kid?” Wheezie smiles around her mouthful of goldfish and nods enthusiastically. John B smiles alongside her, identically childish and arguably much more naive. 

“I promise,” she says, and John B spreads his arm wide. 

“See?” he says, not entirely sarcastic. 

Pope looks at John B like he’s from another planet. “You are so --” he starts, but then trails off, and presses his lips together. Pope’s fists clench a few times in his lap, before he turns to Wheezie. “How did you know it was Kie, anyway?” he asks. 

Wheezie swallows her goldfish with a concentrated effort and stares at Pope, reaching back toward the carton without looking at John B. He tilts it toward her again, and she takes another handful. “Are you kidding?” she says matter-of-factly. She doesn’t elaborate. 

Kiara shifts in her seat. It’s weird, watching Wheezie interact with the Pogues, like a collision of worlds. JJ sees the movement, and his eyes flick over to her, eyebrows pushed together. They’re sitting on the same couch, her sideways, her feet up on the center cushion. JJ’s at the other end, leaning his elbows on his knees. Looking at her from under his bangs, he raises an eyebrow, and she shrugs. Checking in, without saying anything. Reaching out, he wraps his hand around her ankle, palm to her bare skin. 

As Pope, John B and Wheezie argue, Kiara takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, focusing on JJ’s emotions, finding peace in the way he opens himself up to her. There’s the deep red of his anxiety and a greenish-yellow hint of fear, a scarlet streak of anger and burgundy frustration. But under it, there’s the steady deep blue of JJ himself. He’s a wildcard, always swimming with half-thought impulses and tugged to and fro by violent reactions, but underneath, there is a deep, persistent loyalty, the same color as the ocean, a fierce desire to protect not only her but their friends, and this place they call their home. It is here she finds her center, drowning in that color, breathing in the nostalgic smell of salt air and old spice, focusing on the way his thumb pushes slowly back and forth over the delicate skin of her ankle. In answer, the frenzy of adrenaline-fueled energy and feeling in JJ’s mind dims and softens, her mindfulness a center to him, as well. They ground each other, provide a refuge in fraught moments, the simplest touch an escape, a moment of quiet calm in the midst of a storm. 

She opens her eyes and tunes back in as Wheezie says something about the shitty quality of their masks (which like, fair), and feels JJ do the same. He doesn’t move his hand though, and she appreciates the complimentary pulse of his mind alongside hers, like heartbeats in sync or gentle waves in soft embrace with the shore. 

“I’m just saying,” Wheezie insists, reaching out once more for the goldfish carton, John b obliging wordlessly. “Wouldn’t  _ you _ recognize your older sister’s best friend in a bad bank-robber costume?” That one stings, a little bit, more the part about Sarah than the insult, and she keeps walls around her hurt even as JJ snorts at the quip. 

“Well if you’re so concerned, why don’t you come up with something better?” Pope exclaims, clearly meant as a trump card to shut Wheezie up. It doesn’t shake her at all. In fact, she lights up, sitting straight and leaning forward. 

“Are you asking?” she replies, a mischievous spark lit in her brown eyes. Pope looks suddenly nervous. “Cause if you’re being sarcastic you should tell me now.” she taps her temple with her index finger. “The idea factory here has been churnin for a while so if you wanna hear ‘em I got ‘em.” Kiara smiles at that, one hand coming up to cover her mouth as Pope looks between her and JJ and the snarky young teenager in front of him. 

“You --” he splutters, looking at Wheezie. “She --” he starts again, and then turns to Kiara. She shrugs, her own amusement driven higher by the expanding giddy yellow of JJ’s smile. 

Around Pope, she says; “Whatcha got, kid?” 

Wheezie’s always been bright, quick on her feet, imaginative and intuitive. She’s freakishly smart and driven -- she’ll learn anything she wants to, given freedom from distractions. It’s no surprise that she’s been thinking of ways to improve their costumes since they picked her up at the school. She’d think of ways to improve the wheel, if she wanted to. Finally given the opportunity, she reaches into her backpack and pulls out a notebook, already babbling excitedly. JJ taps his thumb against Kiara’s ankle, raising his eyebrows, and the question is there, in his mind, clear as day, even without the words. She shrugs, and he smiles. 

They’re up too late that night, and the night after that. Wheezie never seems to run out of energy, constantly talking and coming up with new ideas. She even draws up a sketch for a jetpack at some point, saying that it’s criminal that neither of them can fly. (Luckily, as she starts prototyping, that gets thrown out pretty quickly.) Pope begrudgingly lets her into his ‘workshop,’ which is just the boathouse, rotting out behind the Chateau, unoccupied and dusty, and she finishes the gauntlets he’d been tinkering with for months in a matter of days. 

Trying them on is a momentous event, accompanied with much fanfare from John B, JJ, and Wheezie, and a good amount of disgruntled mumbling from Pope. The design is elegant, almost like the bracers that Wonder Woman wears. (Something Kiara tells Wheezie, her bright-pink joy radiating out from their brief high-five.) The experiment is performed while Big John sleeps, Kiara out on the dock and the rest of them crowded near the water’s edge. She’d had to nag JJ about it -- he’d insisted it would be fine, but the untested technology gave her pause. His compulsion to always be at her side, while usually adorable, reassuring, and oftentimes useful, can get frustrating in situations where she needs him to  _ detach _ . 

The cheer that erupts from the shore when she flicks the test buoy makes her chest soar even as it splits her eardrums. JJ had easily dragged the enormous metal derelict that usually resided in the boneyard up to the van and then put it in the water completely by himself. He’d looked up at Wheezie’s awed face and shrugged, like it was nothing. Kiara was glad that Wheezie was so visibly impressed, because the ripple of the muscle under golden skin as JJ slung the buoy into the water flipped her stomach in an interesting manner she had exactly zero inclination to examine. 

With the gadgets finished (Wheezie also designs JJ a belt akin to the one weightlifters wear, so he won’t hurt himself), she starts designing costumes, and when the commissions from the highly-suspicious etsy artist finally arrive, JJ looks sideways at Wheezie when he holds up the durable black shirt, already dressed in the leather boots and cargo pants, his specialized belt wrapped around his waist, his chest bare. 

“How much did this cost?” he asks, and Wheezie shrugs from her place where she’s ensconced in the large arm chair. 

“Does it matter?” she shrugs, her nintendo switch in her hands. JJ’s eyes flick from the device to hers, and Kiara doesn’t need to touch him to feel the consternation rolling off of him in waves. JJ’s got a solid and immovable sense of pride, something Wheezie doesn’t get. She doesn’t know that when JJ was young, and even now, still, pride is all he has. He hates charity, always has, and John B and Pope are both frozen, tuned into the exchange. Kiara’s watching his face, watching the wrinkles in his forehead, his eyes as he considers whether or not he wants to have this argument. She’s hoping he doesn’t. Wheezie’s developed a little bit of a hero-complex with JJ, superpowers notwithstanding, and harsh words from him might rattle her beyond recovery. It’s a very sibling relationship, one that takes the place of the one she has with Rafe, which has veritably rotted through. Kiara doesn’t think Wheezie would be able to handle another rejection like that. 

Every single breath in the room stays held, and Kiara finds herself biting her lip, ready to intervene. But JJ doesn’t say anything, just pulls the shirt on over his head, and her eyes leave Wheezie to watch the contraction of the muscles in his back. It does something to her stomach, makes it flip and stumble, and this has been happening too much lately, the way that JJ makes her stop breathing for just a second too long. She tries not to think about it, usually, but it’s happening often enough that she can’t just not pay attention to it anymore. She has a thing for him. 

Unfortunately. 

JJ’s head pops out of the shirt and pulls it down over his hips, looking at her, his blond mop staticky and tangled. “What?” he asks, and the rest of the world comes back into focus, the collective held breath relaxing with his acceptance of Wheezie’s gift. 

She shrugs, forcing nonchalance, and shrugs. “Looks good,” she says, and  _ fuck _ , that smile could rival the sun. 

With the costumes and the tech, they get more serious about being Honos and Veritas. JJ starts staying up way too late and falling asleep in class. Which isn’t like, unheard of, but becomes common enough to be concerning. They finally let Wheezie have all the information they’d gathered, all the names and dates and addresses, and she comes to the same conclusion as Kiara -- she needs to see it. 

So one night, they buy a map of Kildare and spread it across the kitchen table. They always have to do the obvious work at night, after waiting for Big John to leave for his security guard shift. Consequently, it’s late by the time they get all of the pickup and dropoff locations marked out. Partly because there’s a lot of information, and partly because there was a somewhat massive argument over whether they should use sharpies or Wheezie’s colorful gel pens. 

It’s almost midnight by the time everything is marked with Xs (red sharpie) and circles (purple glitter pen), and they have school the next day. Pope goes home, and John B crashes out around eleven, and it’s just JJ and Kiara and Wheezie, staring at a marked-up map under the dim kitchen light. Kiara fights to keep her eyes open, and finally, JJ leads her to the pullout, leaving a lingering lavender kiss on her forehead. 

She’s been careful about touch, recently, since she realized how she feels about him. Surprisingly, it hasn’t fucked with her much at all, hasn’t changed how she looks at him. It feels, somehow, like a gear finally slotting into place, a stuck piston sliding free, like an engine turning over after hours of work. Triumphant and relieving and an effort of two pairs of hands. But still, there’s a difference between accepting something and being ready to act on it. Besides, they’re closer to finding the Phantom than ever before, and she can’t distract him with this now. Also, there’s no certainty that he feels the same way. She has suspicions, of course, the warmth that that always accompanies his thoughts of her, the way his hands seem to carve away the sadness and anxiety and apprehension. 

His voice wakes her around two in the morning, and when she lifts her heavy head to look into the kitchen, he’s got one hand braced against the table, looking over Wheezie’s shoulder, his face lit by the computer screen. He looks excited, and Wheezie does too, and when he ruffles her hair, her eyes shine like a little kid that just got a sticker on their homework. Kiara sits up fully, dragging her hair into a lopsided bun, and shuffles off the thin, creaky mattress, the groan of the springs alerting both of them to her presence. 

“Kie!” JJ says, his smile a beacon in the dim room. He rushes over to her, his bare feet slapping against the floorboards, and takes her hand. As calloused fingers intertwine with hers, her senses are overwhelmed with orange excitement, and she can’t help but mirror his grin, the expression stretching lazily across her face, blurred with sleep but more comfortable in its lack of inhibition. Pulling her towards the table, JJ starts rambling entirely too quickly for her half-asleep brain to keep up. It starts to come together as her eyes focus in on the map, and the crisscrossing lines that have been scrawled across it. 

Unconsciously, she leans into JJ, her cheek landing on his bare shoulder, and struggles to parse the information as she’s overwhelmed with his elation and anticipation. Oranges and yellows cloud the edge of her vision, and she’s not quite awake enough to compartmentalize properly. She should be focused on the Phantom, but instead, she’d rather drown in JJ’s happiness, rare and yet as kind and natural as sunshine. 

It isn’t until he explains it, tracing his fingers over the lines wheezie has drawn in multiple, sparkly colors, that it starts to connect. 

“The salvage yard,” Kiara breathes. “Of course. I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now.” 

“To be fair,” Wheezie offers, looking up at her. “You actually did, you just didn’t know that you did.” Kiara thinks back to the night they had to step in and save Wheezie, the conclusion her mind was circling around but hadn’t dived for, not yet. It had taken some time, through all the distractions, but Wheezie had done it -- dug out the same conclusion from the mess and tangle of information. 

“What does your dad want at the salvage yard?” JJ says, and when did he put his arm around her waist? How long has she been pressed against his side, her head on his shoulder, her hand curled loosely in his shirt? He’s warm and she’s shivering, dressed only in a tank top and basketball shorts with holes near the hem that have long forsaken their original owner. 

Wheezie’s eyes dart to where JJ’s hand rests on Kiara’s hip, but she doesn’t say anything, and silently, Kiara thanks her for that. There’s too much going on to consider any sort of confrontation about her feelings for JJ, even as she can feel the blend of their emotions rising and falling like a gentle tide, his fiery reds and oranges against her cool blues and greens, like the sunrise over the ocean. 

“Who says it’s my dad?” Wheezie asks, and there’s fear in her voice still. As smart as she is, as streetwise and wily, Wheezie is still fourteen years old. Unconsciously, Kiara’s mind reaches out a pale green warning, brushing against JJ’s thoughts in an unspoken whisper, telling him to be careful. She doesn’t remind him of his own father, not on purpose, but he appears in her thoughts, and therefore must be in his, too. She doesn’t know how much he shares, in moments like this, how much he hears and feels. He’s got to hear some of it, to know her the way he does. 

Something changed, after that night on the beach, when the research lab exploded and they found themselves living an entirely new life. He’s more tuned in, she thinks, is the best way to explain it. They were on the same wavelength before, of course, in the way that best friends are, but this, somehow, has brought them even closer. Now, it almost feels like JJ is an extension of herself, like if she can’t find her own answers, she can reach out to his mind for help. He’s always nearby, ready and willing. Her attraction to him, while recently discovered, has been persistent for some time, and, coupled with their casual affection and the way his thoughts feel like a second home for hers -- well. Is there any other word, for something like that? 

JJ raises his eyebrows at Wheezie, and Kiara notes the thin, pale blue ribbon of well-founded skepticism that threads through the gesture. 

“Fine,” Wheezie admits, turning back to her computer. “It’s probably my dad.” Kie wants to reach for her, but doesn’t think she can handle two minds at once. To her surprise, it’s JJ who reaches out. She doesn’t know how Wheezie reacts, but she can feel JJ’s intent through his skin, the brotherly affection and the commiseration, too, the navy hints of deep-seated grief underneath. She can feel him wandering close to those dark halls that branch off of where he keeps himself, and she lets her reassurance brush through their bond, her presence a soft purple, like the dawn. The way his mind relaxes into the contact reminds her of the way he’ll tilt his face into her hand, sometimes. 

She closes her eyes, leaning her weight into JJ’s side, trying not to think about the Phantom and the hunt for him, just for a minute. She’ll celebrate this victory in the morning -- for now, she just wants to cozy into JJ’s warmth, and maybe even fall asleep in his arms. Wheezie yawns, and Kiara hopes that maybe now she’ll finally allow herself to get some sleep. Wheezie’s hand comes up to cover JJ’s where it rests on her shoulder, and JJ tilts his head over, resting his temple against Kiara’s hairline. In the dim light of the kitchen, the three of them look not unlike a family.

They can’t go to the salvage yard immediately, and in the intermediate days, JJ can’t seem to sit still. Well, even more than usual, that is. She knows, of course, why he’s so dead-set on revealing the identity of the Phantom. 

She didn’t know JJ, before. Not even John B knew JJ when his mom was still around. But she knows from the way JJ talks about his father that there used to be love there, no matter how deeply buried in glass shards it now may be. She knows there’s drugs, even if she doesn’t know what kind. And she knows that he didn’t start using until he got wrangled into the smuggling trade to put food on the table. JJ blames the Phantom for the transformation of the man who calls himself his father. He’s never said as much, but after years of friendship and a few months of telepathic powers, she’s learned as much. He’s close, finally, to getting his revenge. Maybe too close, if the gleam in his eyes is anything to go by. 

Kiara worries about JJ most days -- he does dumb shit, like see if he can climb electrical poles, or attempt to optimize how much air he can get off the stern of the HMS Pogue while John B goes fifty through the canals -- but that’s different to the kind of worry that sits in her chest as she watches JJ fidget through classes and stay up all night poring over maps and names and a million other things, trying in vain to get the tangled web of it all to lead back to Ward. JJ needs answers, and Kiara is getting more and more nervous about what he’ll do to get them. 

They decide to break in to the salvage yard on a Sunday afternoon, when it’s closed and the less legal activities that may be occurring will be, at the very least, at a minimum. The black outfit makes her sweat and she knows the mask is going to make her break out like hell, but JJ’s manic edge has dulled, and there’s a thrill in her chest, too, knowing that months of work are about to reach a conclusion. 

They equip the rest of their ragtag scooby gang with walkie talkies, and John B, Pope, and Wheezie (who John B has taken to calling ‘Pogie’ or ‘Pogita’) take the north half of the yard, and Kiara and JJ the south. Pope starts to say something about it making little sense to leave the non-powered individuals ‘relatively defenseless’ but Wheezie elbows him in the ribs for reasons unknown before he can finish his thought. 

JJ walks halfway past it before stopping and turning to look at the name painted on the bow. “Can’t be,” he whispers, and then jumps, easily catching the handrail and hauling himself over. It takes a few fruitless jumps of her own for JJ to come back for her, reaching one hand down. She wraps her hands around his wrist, the presence of his mind sliding into place next to hers an old comforting habit, and he hauls her up like it’s nothing. Which, to him, she supposes it is. Catching just the hint of manic dread as he pulls away from her touch, she follows him into the cockpit. 

“This is my dad’s boat,” he says, and his hand shakes as he lays it on the wheel. Kiara reaches to cover it with her own, and he flinches. The reaction pinches at the back of her throat, but she draws back, respecting his unspoken boundary. He doesn’t want her in his head right now. “He said he’d never sell it. He said --” JJ swallows, and behind his mask, she can see tears welling in his eyes. “He said I’d get it. After.” He swallows, bites his lip, and then blinks a few times rapidly, dusting his hand off on his pants. “Probably sold it for dope,” he says, his voice dropping like it does when he wants to pretend he’s fine. “Asshole.” 

“JJ --” she starts, and she wants to reach for him again, even knowing that he’ll shrug her off. He won’t let her in, not at a time like this. He can be vulnerable about so much else, but his dad -- well. He’s never said what makes it such a sore spot, but she’s seen the bruises, the way he’ll go home once and then not again for another several weeks. She’s heard the drunken ramblings and felt the quiet sobs shake the bed they so often share. He’s never let her sort through the cloud of angst and heartbreak, of rage and grief and fear that surrounds his relationship with his father. She’s watched him swallow it, so many times. 

JJ takes a step backward, toward the entrance of the cockpit, and something about the sound his boot makes when it hits the deck gives her pause. “Wait,” she says, and he stops, on alert. She’s found something, and he knows without her having to say anything. Slowly, her eyes travel the controls, and she notices a lever that’s a lot shinier than the rest of the grody metal and white plastic surrounding it. “Gotcha,” she whispers, and reaches out to pull it. 

“hwEAUGH!!” 

She whips around at the sound just in time to watch JJ’s head disappear into the hatch. The guttural yell is quickly followed by a (much quieter) -- “fuck.” 

“Sorry!” she calls down, rushing to the opening. In the square of sunlight, she can JJ slowly untangling himself from momentarily being a crumpled heap. 

“I’m all for pulling random levers,” he says, “but maybe make sure I’m not standing on the trapdoor, next time?” He rubs the top of his head, hair dusty and one eye squinted closed, and Kiara can’t help it -- she laughs. Holding his hands out before letting them fall, JJ shakes his head. “Glad this is fun for you,” he says. “Great. This is -- this is great.” 

“I’m sorry,” she laughs again, lowering herself onto the ladder and climbing down. When she gets to the bottom, JJ is dusting off his ass, and when she snickers, he stops and glares at her. “I really am sorry,” she promises through giggles. 

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” Clapping his hands together, he turns, staring down the dark hallway that’s been dug into the sandy soil. It looks like something out of a jailbreak movie, straggly roots hanging down from the ceiling, fine sand occasionally drifting down from the ceiling. JJ pulls a flashlight out of one of the pockets in his cargo pants -- Kie makes a mental note to stop mocking them -- and takes a deep breath. She pokes him just under his ribs, and he jumps, slapping at her hand. 

“After you,” she says, nudging him forward. She can tell he really, really wants to stick his tongue out at her. 

“You suck,” he says instead, but starts walking forward, anyway. They reach a dead end, tunnels splitting off right and left. One slopes up, and the other down, and JJ sizes up the options, and then turns to her, raising an eyebrow. She shrugs, and he rolls his eyes. He wets his lips, and she watches the gears turn in his mind. It’s moments like this that makes her hate everyone who calls JJ stupid, because he’s not. He sucks at school and is easily distracted and sometimes makes some pretty fucking awful decisions, but he’s observant, and calculating. It’s not that he doesn’t understand risks -- it’s that he takes them intentionally. It’s this part of him that chooses the right tunnel -- the one that slopes downward. He turns that way, and then looks at her, checking in. 

She nods. 

There are doorways in the tunnel, roughly cut into the earthen walls. The doors are poorly-tacked-together driftwood or hunks of metal torn from wrecked boats, crudely padlocked shut with lengths of chain strung through metal loops screwed into the wall. Unconsciously, Kie sticks close to JJ’s back, her senses trained to any noise that may be coming from behind them. She’s so close she can feel the heat of his body radiating off of him, and she clenches her fist to stop herself from reaching forward to hook her finger into the back of his shirt. There’s a magnetic pull to his presence, a gravity to the great, impossible strength he carries in his shoulders. She wishes more than anything that he would reach back and take her hand, that she had the extension of his mind connected to her own, to help hold up the anxiety that turns and rolls there, like the ocean churning up a storm. 

When he stops, she takes one step too many and stumbles into his back, not even jostling him. His eyes are concerned when he turns, but she shrugs, and then bumps her shoulder into his as his smile indicates his recognition of her clumsy mistake. They’re standing in a dead-end, and the door in front of him is real this time, with a keypad  _ and _ a fingerprint scanner above the knob. Clearly, only one person is meant to be able to go through this door. 

“Your turn, Megamind,” JJ says, and she swallows a laugh in favor of false indignance. 

“He wasn’t even telekinetic,” she protests, but steps around him anyway. He turns to watch her back as she places her fingers lightly against the cool metal, closing her eyes and reaching out with her mind. 

This particular skill took weeks of practice, sitting in the Chateau living room or on her bed or even under her desk in class, feeling for the mechanisms of the lock and moving the tiny pieces of metal to her will. She’d sit with a combination lock from Kerr drug in her palm, eyes closed or staring into the middle distance, gently tugging at the loop until it popped free. To her surprise, the electric lock is more of a farce than anything, releasing a small magnet that would allow the key to turn. She lifts the tiny piece of metal and then turns her attention to the tumblers, testing each of them until the door clicks slightly. Smiling to herself, she turns the entire assembly to the left, and then, to be a showoff, turns the knob without touching it, stepping back as the door swings open. 

“That’s still dope as hell,” JJ says, and when she turns to him, his smile matches her own. He’s closer than she thought he was, just over her shoulder, and his blue eyes are almost a dark navy in the shadows being thrown from his flashlight. He licks his lips again, and she can’t help it -- her eyes drop and her breath hitches at the realization that she could kiss him, if she wanted to. He hasn’t moved away, and when she looks back up, she watches his eyes flick up from her own mouth. This understanding unlocks an entirely different kind of adrenaline rush, her blood pounding in her ears. She wants to reach for him, tangle her fingers between his and  _ finally _ know if he wants this, too. 

But then, a cold draught whistles through the tunnel, tickling the small, soft curls along her hairline, and she remembers where they are. Swallowing, she takes a step back, and the moment shatters. 

“After you,” she says, forcing nonchalance, glad that JJ’s not the mind reader. 

He seems unaffected as he steps past her through the door, and her uncertainty is triggered by his seeming indifference. There  _ was _ a moment, wasn’t there? That wasn’t just her? For a mind reader, she feels frustratingly clueless as to the thought process happening in her best friend’s head, and does her best to clear her own as she follows him in. 

There’s a switch by the door, and she reaches over and flicks it on, a small buzz preceding the illumination of a dim yellow globe in the earthen ceiling. A desk sits in the center, and file cabinets ring the walls. Behind the desk, there’s a map of Kildare, and she goes to study it as JJ sets about ripping open ‘locked’ file cabinet drawers, forcing the small tabs next to the handles without hesitation. 

“They’re gonna know we were here if you break all the locks,” she points out. 

“Oh,” he says, like it genuinely didn’t occur to him, and she rolls her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he continues, “Did you want to megamind them all open?” 

“Call me that one more time,” she says, “see what happens.” The banter sets part of her storming mind at ease. If he’d really just rejected her the way she thought he might have, he wouldn’t be as casual with her as he’s being now. JJ may be the best liar out of all of them, but she always sees right through his attempts at hiding anything from her. Cursing the teenaged part of her mind that’s obsessed with her best friend, she refocuses. They’re in a drug lord’s base of operations, underground, with no indication of how far said criminal may be willing to go in order to stop them from learning what he knows. She can think about kissing JJ later. Which like, holy fuck, she really was  _ about to kiss him _ . 

“What are you looking at?” he asks, and she jumps a little, knocked free from her thoughts. 

“The map,” Kie says, finally forcing her eyes to focus, scrambling to parse it for information as she sweeps aside the distraction. It looks like the one they’d spread across the kitchen table the other night, only with more pickup and dropoff locations marked out, symbols with no legend. They won’t need one, though, not when they already have some of the information. Pulling a disposable camera out of her pocket -- they’d thought it better to leave their phones (and their GPS capabilities) at home -- she snaps a picture. “Looks like Barry gave us good information,” she says, cranking the small plastic wheel with her thumb. 

“Probably the most useful thing that spineless douchecanoe has ever done,” JJ sneers, pawing through files. 

“You’ve been spending too much time with Wheezie,” she points out. 

“Kid’s got some fun insults,” he admits, pulling a dirty manila folder out of a drawer, his eyebrows pulled together. 

“What?” she asks, moving to join him behind the desk as he sets it down and opens it. They lean over the papers and photographs together. It doesn’t look like much, a ledger backdated to the early 2000s. Incomings and outcomings, routes and codes and nicknames. “What is it?” she asks again, failing to understand what about this particular file is significant. She finds herself wanting to reach for his hand again, wanting to know exactly what’s going on in his head. But she knows, also, that if he wanted her to know what he was thinking, he would have said something, or reached for her, himself. 

“This handwriting,” he says, and when she meets his eyes, they’re confused and devastated, all at the same time. An ocean of grief, blue and turbulent, heaving and desperate and scared. “It’s my dad’s.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has built himself on his love for her. That was the structure she had felt in his soul, the framework by which he lived and felt and fought. After so long, she had finally stepped inside the home he’d made as he bled beneath her hands. It was always waiting for her, just inside his chest, doors open, hearth burning, and it wasn’t until she’d been living there a while that she knew she had even begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello I am actually quite proud of this chapter so I hope you like it I'm sorry it took so long this was supposed to be done by the end of january oops

She  _ wants _ to say ‘no it isn’t.’ She  _ wants _ to pretend that he’s lying, claim that he’s making up one of his outrageous stories. She waits for his smile, waits for his admittance that he’s kidding, that there’s no chance the Phantom could be his father. But there isn’t any of that, and she doesn’t need to lay her hand on his to know that he’s telling the truth. 

As they stare at each other, two minds, separate but slowly falling together, the pieces slot into place. JJ’s father started as an addict returning from Iraq, just after JJ was born. Then, he was recruited into the smuggling operation by the kingpin before him, and, slowly, climbed the ranks. After a fashion, he named himself after the boat that brought him his success and turned the small operation that supplied Kildare with drugs into a small, incredibly lucrative enterprise. The whole story is slowly revealed over the next hour and hundreds of files, spread out across the floor and the desk, piecing together the timeline. Once they have it in order, Kiara has taken photos of all of it with her disposable camera, along with the extra in JJ’s cargo pants, and JJ himself is silent as they pack up the information and set the office to rights. He hasn’t said much since the revelation, and it’s their friendship, rather than her powers, that tells her why his hands shake as he tucks the last file away. 

“You had no idea,” she says, when the last drawer shuts. It’s not a question. He shakes his head. “JJ --” she starts, and finally reaches for him, laying her hand on his shoulder. He freezes, just for an instant. She holds her breath. There’s no skin contact -- she can’t feel what he’s thinking, not with her powers. But tension hums under his skin, hinting at the superhuman strength that his young, weary body carries. Her chest aches, hollow and caving in. JJ’s relationship with his dad is fraught on their best days. There used to be abuse, she thinks, before they got their powers. Now, he mostly lives at the Chateau, only returning home when he needs clean clothes or something out of his room. There’s a cot in Pope’s workshop, and a cabinet half-filled with tools and half overflowing with JJ’s things. He’s slowly been moving out of his father’s house, and whether he was hoping no one would notice or just not saying anything, Kiara doesn’t know. 

He was so ready for the Phantom to be Ward. It made sense with the way JJ is able to stomach the stratified world they lived in. The rich keep the poor drugged and hopeless, keep the desperate in the dirt and then grind them under Italian leather loafer heels. To think that Luke, a man ruined and made unrecognizable by drugs, was the mastermind of his own downfall -- it’s fucking with Kiara’s head. She can’t imagine what it’s doing to JJ. The truth in the files is grating and bloody and horrible. Luke isn’t a victim of a sick and bleeding society -- he’s the villain behind it. He’s chosen money and rage and getting high over his own family, his own son. A part of her wonders where the money goes, if Luke really is the Phantom, but JJ has talked about his father’s gambling problem, his obsession with doubling, tripling any stroke of good luck, and how he always, always loses it all, by the end. JJ’s father has built an empire in reverse, a city dug into the ground, and Luke is the derelict, criminal king at the center, lying not only to himself but also the only person left on this island that might dare to love him. 

“I’m fine,” JJ says, and shrugs off her hand. 

“You’re not fine,” Kie protests, and then, to prove her point, snatches up his hand. 

The rage that crashes over her is nearly overwhelming, a tidal, tsunami-like flood the color of fresh blood. He seethes with it, and it is less a drowning than a resurgence, a geyser, an explosion long kept quiet. There have always been shadows in the corners of JJ’s mind, dark and smudged, brown and black and purple, the color of old wounds, but this anger is terrible, all of those scars ripped open at once, his heart pounding, pulsing and pumping out all of the grief and desperation and betrayal that came with every blow of his father’s fist across his face. For an instant, as she touches him, she feels it all. 

Kiara’s vision cuts back in abruptly as JJ tears his hand away -- the loss of contact a painful, ragged separation of their shared minds. When her gaze finds his face, his blue eyes are that of a wild animal, hurt and terrified and ready to rip any threat to shreds. His chest heaves with ragged breath, and, although he stands only inches away, she feels horribly separated from him, like she’s suddenly lost a limb.

“JJ, I --” she starts, shellshocked and immediately sorry. She doesn’t have the words to apologize for the gross invasion she has committed, for how she wishes she could undo what she has just done. In the same moment, she is aching and terrified, in awe at the way he can hold something like that in the confines of his skin, amazed that he’s still standing. “ I shouldn’t have -- that wasn’t --” JJ sets his jaw, tilting his head up with the gesture, and she can almost see the walls slam down behind his eyes, knowing that when she next touches him, there will be doors forever locked shut. 

“It’s fine,” he repeats. “Let’s get out of here.” He brushes past her and then waits at the door, and after a moment, she follows, eyes wide, still wondering and shaken. He waits for a moment while she reaches for the inner workings of the lock, and she’s grateful that his back is turned so that he doesn’t see the tremor in her hands. Tears threaten behind her closed eyes, and before they start back down the tunnel, she takes a steadying breath, tucking away the overwhelming fear into neat boxes, clearing her mind. They’re not out of this yet. 

She walks slightly behind him as they head for the surface, her thoughts simmering and threatening to jump through the thin barrier she’s constructed. If she gives them any more time or attention, they’ll turn to a rolling boil and she’ll never be able to keep them in check. Instead, she focuses on JJ’s boots, fitting her own smaller shoes into his footprints, the pace of his heels lifting setting a metronome, carrying her forward as she blocks out everything but the need to keep walking forward. 

JJ hears them first, stopping dead, and Kiara just barely avoids slamming into him again. Her head snaps up, an insult automatically ready on her tongue, but then she sees his face, his outstretched arms, and swallows it. Something’s wrong. Voices echo down the carved-out tunnel, casual and joking and getting closer. The hall that stretches behind them dead-ends in the Phantom’s --  _ Luke’s _ \-- office, and they haven’t reached the fork that will take them to the surface. They’re rats in a trap.

About five yards ahead, there’s a ramshackle door, and JJ drags her toward it, his hand around her wrist linking them for the first time since his barely-contained explosion in the office. She doesn’t reach out through the bond, though, just sees the muddled mess of his thoughts appearing next to hers, and does her best to keep her own panic under control. Tugging her next to the door, he nods urgently to the lock, and she just looks at him, waiting for him to break it -- it would be easy for him. Huffing in frustration, he closes his eyes and communicates through the fingers looped around her wrist. 

It’s not words, exactly, but the idea filters into her mind, almost like a memory of something she’d read once. A reminder, almost, instead of an original thought. If JJ breaks the lock, whoever is coming down the tunnel will see it and they’ll be caught. He needs Kiara to pop the padlock and then re-fasten the chain once they’re on the other side of the door. Her understanding brushes his plan a soft orange, and he opens his eyes and lets go, putting himself in the center of the tunnel, slightly ahead of her, feet planted wide and stance ready. If they’re caught before they can duck through the door, he’s putting himself in between her and any danger, and his instinctive loyalty eases some of her worry about her earlier mistake. He won’t let her get hurt. 

She holds the simple padlock in her palm and picks it quickly, popping the top and sliding the chain out of the loop screwed into the wall as quietly as she can. Ushering JJ through it, she follows, and then closes it mostly behind her, leaving it cracked enough so she can feed the chain back through the loop and close the lock before pulling it shut. 

The room they’ve stepped into is more of a damp cave, barely tall enough for JJ to stand. A pallet sits in the middle, keys of cocaine stacked and shrink-wrapped to keep out the moisture. There’s less than a foot between the end of the pallet and the door, and as the voices get closer, JJ presses himself to the wall behind the door and reaches out, pulling Kie into his chest. One arm lands tight across her collarbones, and she wraps her hands around his forearm, grip tight with fear, her eyes squeezed shut as footsteps plod slowly closer. JJ’s anxiety blends into her own, and their breathing syncs unconsciously, shallow and slow. 

Her apology sits unspoken in her mind, and without her usual precautions of guarding her own thoughts, it seeps into JJ’s, deep purple and bleeding, like ink, through all of the valleys and cracks of the facade he’s trying so desperately to hold together. She bites her lip as she feels his body sag behind her, and acceptance floods through him, a soft pale green, and then a quiet, small apology of his own. Swallowing tears, she leans back into his chest, and his forehead drops to her shoulder, the arm holding her squeezing slightly, In this silence, forgiveness is granted. 

The silence is shattered by the squawk of the walkie-talkie on JJ’s belt, Wheezie’s voice ripped apart by static. Kiara curses under her breath and her hand flies down to the knob on the top, muting it as quickly as she can. Unfortunately, it isn’t fast enough. The footsteps stop and voices are raised in alarm, calling out accusations and questions. JJ curses, much louder than Kiara did, and pushes her behind him before shoving his shoulder into the makeshift door. The lock breaks as the old wood explodes outward, and before she can blink, JJ takes Kiara’s hand and is dragging her out and back up the slightly sloping tunnel. She’s got the flashlight, she remembers, and turns it on, the beam waving wildly as they sprint up the way they came. 

Her feet barely touch the ground as she runs after JJ, trying to keep up with his superpowered-pace, and when they careen around the corner, her shoulder nearly comes out of its socket with the force by which she is pulled in a new direction. By the time they reach the ladder, the men chasing them have just reached the corner, and JJ boosts Kiara through the opening. He’s so panicked he doesn’t control his strength as well as he should, and she’s momentarily airborne before falling in a heap on the deck of the derelict boat. 

JJ follows a few seconds later, clambering up onto the deck himself, panting. “Sorry,” he manages, upon noticing her mildly disgruntled expression. 

“Trapdoor,” she points out, and tosses him a rusted gaff hook. He catches it and shoves it through the handle of the door before casually bending it practically in half, the twisted metal unbreachable from the other side. It is, simply put, one of the hottest things she’s ever seen. 

“What?” he asks as she stares, still gasping for breath, and why does she want to tell him  _ now _ , when they’re on the run from violent criminals and he’s in emotional agony from finding out his father is the drug lord they’ve been chasing for months instead of  _ literally any other point _ like a  _ normal fucking human being _ . An enraged knocking comes from the stuck trapdoor, shaking her loose from the trance her stupid, horny, teenage-girl brain dropkicked her into, and she shakes her head, closing her mouth, which she hadn’t realized had fallen open. 

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here,” he says, and disappears over the side of the boat. When she looks down, he’s holding his arms up, beckoning. “Kie,” he says, “C’mon, jump!” She looks down at him, his eyes open and trusting. He’ll catch her, of course, she’s not afraid that he won’t, but the gap to the ground gives her pause, all the same. “I got you,” he promises, and, taking a breath, she hitches her leg over the rail. 

Before she can jump, her head snaps up at the sound of pounding feet. The cronies they trapped in the tunnel must have had walkie talkies of their own, because a crew of overly-muscled guys rounds a corner, their guns already drawn. JJ turns, but a warning barely passes her lips before the first shot goes off. His shoulder jerks back, lightning fast, and there’s an ear-splitting  _ crack _ as the bullet buries itself in the side of the fiberglass boat. For an instant, Kiara can’t believe her eyes. She knew JJ’s powers lent themselves to inhuman reflexes, but he’s literally just  _ dodged a bullet _ . 

“KIE!” he shouts, and she balances precariously, throwing out one hand and hauling a gutted boat carcass across the packed dirt, providing at least momentary shelter. Her next move is to launch herself off the side of the boat, and JJ catches her without a second thought, setting her lightly on her feet. “What do we do?” he asks, his eyes darting between the abruptly relocated boat and Kiara, energy coursing through his body and twitching in his fingertips. They’re caged in by rows of wrecks on either side, no escape except toward the Phantom’s henchmen. 

She licks her lips, takes a breath. “We have to fight our way out,” she says, and then sighs. “Don’t look so damn excited about it,” she adds, after noticing his expression. There’s a manic edge to his smile, and she knows that to him, this is revenge. 

“C’mon Kie,” he says, and there’s anger behind those blue eyes, a furious storm lying dormant under the guise of irreverent, juvenile joy. “Haven’t you ever seen a Marvel movie? This is the boss battle.” 

He’s still grinning when the bullet goes through his shoulder. He didn’t see it coming -- he was looking at her. As if in slow-motion, he stumbles back, shock and disbelief dawning as he falls to his knees. Blood bursts and darkens his black outfit, and his face falls as pain overcomes adrenaline. She screams his name, and the world slows and becomes only JJ’s face, only his young vulnerability and the way his blue eyes shine from behind his mask, glassy and scared and begging for her. She falls, too, rushing toward him. Holding his face in her hands, she pushes past the sour fear and bloody anger, wades through all the guilt and pain and everything else, pressing her forehead to his and finding the core of him, the golden sunrise and crashing blue ocean that make up this beautiful, incredible boy. 

“You’re okay,” she’s whispering, and she can feel the pain, stabbing through her own shoulder, hot and blinding and the worst thing she’s ever felt. But not, she realizes, as all defenses fall away and two minds become one, the worst pain he’s ever been in. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” she’s whispering, over and over, desperate for it to be true. 

“Radio the others,” he gasps, “Kiara,  _ Veritas _ , please,” His hands, one clasped to his wound, one fumbling for the radio, are covered in his own blood, blood that coats her skin as he passes over the walkie-talkie. “Kie,” he says, and she pulls back, heart racing, looking in his eyes. “Get us out of here.” 

“Pope,” she says into the radio, keeping her eyes on JJ’s, like if she looks away, they might not be there when she looks back. “John B, Wheezie,  _ anybody _ ” her voice is broken, her throat cracking and desperate. 

_ We’re here!  _ The reply comes, from Wheezie, and, in the background --  _ Fuck, where have you been?? _

“We’re cornered,” she’s gasping, and then puts her own hand on JJ’s wound when he winces and hisses in a breath. She feels it too, but like a ghost of the real thing, and knows it has to be worse for him. “Near the fence in the northwest corner, you guys,  _ get here _ .” 

_ We’re coming!! _ This from Pope, and they don’t have any time, not any time at all, and she can hear the sound of men trying to climb over the skeleton of the old wreck, boots on hollow metal, and JJ’s blood is seeping through her fingers, salty and hot like the tears down her face, and his fear is so strong, it’s gone such a dark green it’s almost black, and there’s regret and this deep, pervading sadness that echoes so far into her bones she won’t ever forget the taste of it. 

“Stay with me,” she’s murmuring, “not like this, you fucking  _ idiot _ , not like this.” 

“Kie --” JJ murmurs, and she shakes her head, furious, her own feelings scrambling like a child drowning under the full force of JJ’s terror and pain. Is this how strongly he feels all the time? How much does he hold back, even when it’s just the two of them? She’s underestimated him, somehow, even with such a deep and unforgiving perspective, there’s still things she doesn’t know. 

“Shut up,” she insists, biting her lip. There’s something swimming in his mind, a framework, an entire  _ structure _ , one thought upon which everything else is built, something so ingrained, so vital to who he is, that she understood it without naming it, unable to see the forest for the trees. “Not like this, JJ, okay?” and then she looks up, tears blurring her vision, and the only thing that’s clear is his blue eyes, shattered and reflecting the sky like broken glass. Her voice falls to a whisper. “Not like this.” 

An engine roars and there’s the sound of screeching metal as the Twinkie clips a leaning tower of motor boats and careens towards them, a wild-eyed Wheezie behind the wheel. John B and Pope pour out of the side of the van, iron in their expressions, and gratitude glimmers in deep in the fog of fear and pain, shining and indicative of hope, somewhere, on the other side of this horrible fucking day. Pope’s knees hit the gravel first, his hands covering Kiara’s, and she turns to him, seeing the way he sets his jaw, the way his face hides terror behind the necessity of strength. His courage is blinding orange, like the sunrise, and the feeling sticks in her chest as she takes her hands from JJ’s wound and stands, crashing back into her own mind, finding it shockingly calm. 

“We’ve got him,” John B assures her, untying his beloved bandana to serve as a bandage, and when Kie’s eyes fall on JJ’s, he nods, even as his jaw tightens with the way he shifts his weight, trying to stand. 

“I’ll be fine,” JJ says. 

When Veritas turns, her hands are dripping blood, and her face is made of stone. She is fury, a storm with skin, a child with the heavy shoulders and burdened mind of a warrior who has seen too much. The air thickens and rages with the energy she pushes into it, scrap metal and rocks whirling in a hurricane of unforgiving blunt force. She walks slowly toward the boat she’d hauled out as a shield, almost casually shoving it to the side to face the wall of men and their simple, cowardly weapons. Behind her, Honos stumbles to his feet, helped by their friends, and his eyes will not leave her, not as she presents herself like a challenge to the men who call his father God. 

“Kiara,” he whispers, afraid for her. 

“Fire!” one man bellows, afraid  _ of _ her. 

The bullets stop in a display of cheated death, and she does not break a sweat, does not even spare the tiny bits of metal a glance as they clatter in a heap at her feet. Rage is born in her twisted lips, and she does not stop in her approach, her projectiles finding their targets in sickening cracks and breathless gasps. 

“Veritas!” Honos says, louder. She doesn’t hear him, hands outstretched and curling into fists, her hair whipping around her face with the small vortex she has created around herself. She’s advancing on the last man, now, her jaw clenched and the very idea of mercy absent from her mind. Pope and John B set JJ gently down on the floor of the van, and John B’s hand flexes on the headrest, his eyes darting between his friends and the terrified thirteen-year-old in the driver’s seat. 

“VERITAS!!” It rings out over the battlefield, one last attempt to get through to his best friend, his partner, the only person left in the world that he trusts to know him in the same way he understands himself. 

She stops. 

“Tell the Phantom we know who he is,” Veritas says, her brown eyes cold and the words falling like hailstones from her mouth. The man trembles under her gaze, shivering with unacknowledged fear, knowing, somehow, that he faces a power he cannot understand. “And that we are coming for him.” 

* * *

Pope and John B take Wheezie home. Big John is out fishing for dinner, so it’s just JJ and Kiara in the kitchen, masks and costumes discarded. He sits on the counter, shirtless, as she pinches together his skin and sutures it as best she can, a YouTube tutorial open on her phone. She keeps her eyes on the task, because she can’t look at him, not while he’s this close, not when the silence between them festers like an open wound. Her hands shake, and she has to keep swallowing down the guilt in her throat, forcing down the realization that it’s  _ JJ’s  _ blood on her fingers,  _ JJ’s _ skin that she’s stitching together. 

“Is this strictly necessary?” he asks, and her eyes flick up to his, just for an instant. His colors are too wild to sort, spinning like light through a kaleidoscope, or neon over a dance floor. Closing her eyes won’t help, not when the stained-glass picture keeps shattering over and over again, too many emotions crashing together, making sense of themselves and then changing their minds. “I just mean,” he continues, and she wishes he would just  _ shut up _ , just stop trying to pretend that he isn’t dizzy, too. “With the super-healing, and all.” 

“You’re not a teenage werewolf,” she reminds him, tying off another stitch, perhaps a little harsher than she has to. She’s picking a fight because that’s easier than surrendering to the way the world spins as she touches him, overwhelmed with his proximity and the intensity of the day. “It’ll still take a week, at least.” 

“Kie,” he pleads, “It’ll heal just fine. Now can’t we just --” She doesn’t want to hear him plan anymore, doesn’t want to think about walking into danger without knowing whether or not they’ll walk out. She needs just one breath, one moment, where there’s no drug lords and no bullet wounds and no more  _ fucking  _ excuses. 

She stops him by spreading her hand out over his chest, her palm over his heart. There’s no justifiable reason for this touch. She just needs to reassure herself that it’s still beating. He inhales sharply, and for a second, the colors settle, solidifying and stitching themselves together. There’s no picture there, no dots to connect or conclusions to draw, just fragments, like a patchwork quilt made from scraps. That’s all JJ has left. Scraps of his family, of his father. Of himself. He is a boy built from a million stories, always left without an ending. His eyes close as he drops his chin, and he leans forward unconsciously, his forehead pressing to hers. She’s holding back tears as cool blue relief borders the storm inside of him. 

“Don’t you  _ ever _ do that again,” she breathes, and the words puff across his mouth, less than an inch from hers now. He nods, fractional movement, but his lips brush against hers as his chin tilts up and then, without meaning to, they’re kissing. 

There’s no shock, no surprise, no sudden demand of what the other is doing. It feels almost cosmic, revelation and acceptance in the stealing of breath and the meeting of lips. He has built himself on his love for her. That was the structure she had felt in his soul, the framework by which he lived and felt and fought. After so long, she had finally stepped inside the home he’d made as he bled beneath her hands. It was always waiting for her, just inside his chest, doors open, hearth burning, and it wasn’t until she’d been living there a while that she knew she had even begun. His hand comes up to hold her cheek, and she tilts her face into the touch. His fingers fit around the curve of her jaw like they were carved just for each other, and falling is the only thing left for her to do. 

When JJ pulls away from her, he doesn’t go far, his blue-sky eyes gazing up at her, his hands on her hips, her arms around his neck. Brushing the tip of his nose against hers, half a smile finds its home on his face, the first since before the salvage yard.

“Promise me,” Kiara says, before she opens her eyes, before the real world can come crashing back in on this perfect moment. 

“Promise you what?” he asks, his hands flexing on her waist. There is a space carved out in his mind for this moment, a quiet pocket of clear afternoon sky among the ripped and shifting patchwork of his thoughts. Her hands cup the back of his head, anchoring her fingers in his hair, focusing on the breath that passes between them, shared air, dizzying and warm. 

“Promise me you won’t get shot again.” 

“Kie --” he groans, and attempts to separate himself, but she holds him tight, pressing her forehead against his. 

“Promise me,” she insists, and tears fight their way up her throat, because she can’t go through the possibility of losing him again, not ever. Not now, when she finally knows how much she loves him. He surrenders to her touch, his eyes falling closed as well, and his hands slide idly up and down over her waist, strong and nimble and young. 

“This isn’t over yet,” he reminds her. There’s regret in his voice, like he wishes he could do what she’s asking him, like he hates himself for not being able to say yes. He’s tired too, aching and exhausted, overwhelmed in the way only youth can be. 

“My dad --” he starts, but his voice cracks, and he cuts himself off. Carefully, she pulls away just enough to look at him, take in the sight of his pale face, the way he presses his lips together in deliberation. His reluctance is the color of red dust as his eyes slowly open. One of her hands slides from the back of his head to hold his jaw, her thumb tracing over his cheekbone, and he blinks a second too long, tilting his face into the touch. 

Their connection feels like a stream through melting ice, clear and flowing in a frozen mess contaminated with dirt and pollution and a thousand other things. She’s not holding back, not exactly, but she keeps her thoughts in this moment, reveling in the warmth of his hands on her, the way his skin seems to glow in the afternoon light that sets him on fire. Confusion of what this moment means and how it fits into the rest of their lives swirls in a hazy cloud in both of their minds, thoughts and feelings near indistinguishable in how much they share through Kiara’s powers. 

“JJ…” she sighs, her thumb pushing gently at the furrow between his eyebrows until it smooths. Fear sits cold around the serene bubble they’ve built, chilling them both, and she doesn’t know how they’re going to finish this, doesn’t know what they’ve so suddenly evolved into, doesn’t know, doesn’t know,  _ doesn’t know _ . There is no plan for what to say next, no way to sift through the storm that blazes and settles all at once in their respective thoughts. She can’t tell what apprehension is hers and what is JJ’s, and her vision clouds at the edges as her mind struggles to keep the physical world in focus. Three words float between them, small and powerful, but she does not know who thought them first. 

This is too strong, too important to be a distraction, but circumstances deem it so. The final battle didn’t end at the salvage yard. They’ve been fighting this war for months, over crumpled maps and settled together in the front seat of Kiara’s car. They’ve dragged their friends into a fight they were never sure how to win, never even sure if they knew how. And now Wheezie, too, a girl, a  _ child _ , young and terrified and looking to them for guidance. But they’re still just kids, just seventeen and scared. They never really stopped reeling from the explosion, just hit the ground at a full sprint, and they’re lightheaded and aching and not even sure what direction the finish line is in. She wants to rest, so badly, just wants it all to  _ stop _ , just for a second. She wants to lay down in his arms, close her eyes and let time pass around them while she floats in the warm waters between dreams and reality. 

But JJ… JJ is ripped and bleeding, both his shoulder and his thoughts. He cannot look away from this, cannot turn his head and pretend it isn’t happening. There is one thing that matters to JJ more than Kiara, and it betrayed him years ago and betrays him over and over still. JJ is still a boy, still a child desperate for the love and approval of his father, still wondering where his family went, still missing the taste of love so cruelly torn from him. 

She knew without knowing, about the hope that he carried with the arrival of their powers. She knew what drove JJ’s desperation for the identity of the Phantom, even without admitting it to herself. Kiara has spent so much time in his mind, there was no way she couldn’t. It was Luke. It was  _ always _ Luke. The memory of him chased JJ even as Luke ran as far from his son as the island would allow. It was revenge that JJ wanted, just as much as justice. And under it all, all the anger and bitterness and grief, hope glimmered, a betrayal in and of itself, that if Honos and Veritas rid Kildare of the Phantom, JJ’s father might return to him. 

“I have to finish this,” JJ sighs. “I have to.” He is falling, tumbling away from her, torn away by rip currents he has no choice but to submit to. It’s not in JJ’s nature to let go. It’s out of his control, the grip his heart has on the people that he loves, the people that once loved him. JJ hates the Phantom, and yet, somehow, after it all, still loves his father. He is crashing, this hurricane boy, losing control over the breakneck speed of his soul. If she doesn’t follow, she might lose him forever. 

“Please,” he says, and the crack in his voice brings him back into heartbreaking focus. For the second time, she marvels at just how much he feels, stands in awe at the way his emotions seem to stretch on forever, as deep and vast and troubled as the ocean itself. “It’s my fucking Dad, Kie.” 

“I know,” she sighs, tracing her fingers over his brow, pushing an errant lock of hair away from his face. And then, falls against him again, kissing him soft and slow and sure. She doesn’t want to leave the safety of his arms, doesn’t want to go back out to the world that threatens to tear them apart. Pulling away, her words are a ghost across his lips. “I know.” 

* * *

When the others come back, JJ goes stone-silent, balling up his shredded shirt in his fist, grimacing with the motion and resolutely ignoring the concerned look that Pope shoots his way. Kiara steps away from him, and he slides off the counter, stalking out to get something from John B’s room. Pope watches him go, and when Kiara looks at John B, she’s surprised to find tears in her friend’s eyes. 

“Is he --” John B’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat and swallows, brushing a hand over his eyes. When he looks at her again, he’s much more composed, but Kiara can still see the terrified little boy underneath. “Is he okay?” 

“His shoulder will heal just fine,” she says, and they both know she hasn’t answered the question. “Wheezie all good?” 

“She’s a tough kid,” John B says, and a bittersweet grin tugs at the corner of his mouth, small and affectionate. It almost hurts, watching it spark and then quickly die. John B is always so quick to laugh, a smile constantly hiding just behind the curtain. But now, she can see exhaustion in his eyes that mirrors her own. “She’ll be okay.” 

“What happened?” Pope asks, finally turning back to the conversation after staring after JJ for a beat too long. His voice is quiet, still, full of anticipation and dread. 

Kiara swallows and licks her lips. Her hands come up and twist together. They’re still stained with JJ’s blood. A part of her wonders if JJ will be upset with her for telling them. But John B and Pope are in this fight, too, have worked just as hard and slept just as little over the past few months. They deserve to know. 

“His dad,” she whispers, and the two boys inhale, the air itself on edge. “It’s him.” The two sets of brown eyes that look back at her are completely baffled, terrified and confused. She steels herself, and speaks again.“Luke is the Phantom.” 

John B’s hands drop to his sides from where he’d been fiddling with the keys to the Twinkie, and Pope’s curl into fists, even as he stands dead still. “There’s no way,” Pope says. 

John B speaks at the same time. “But it was Ward,” he insists. “It was always Ward.” Kiara’s arms come up and cross over her stomach, and it’s too much, too heavy for a teenage girl to bear. The sobs that have been threatening begin to spill, muffled and restrained at first, and then heavy and hard on the kitchen floor. 

“It wasn’t,” she chokes. “It’s been JJ’s --” and she can’t say it, the phrase caught and sticking in her throat. “It was Luke,” she manages. “It’s been Luke the whole time.” John B steps forward and catches her. His loyalty, his stalwart love, is the color of terracotta, enduring over centuries. She falls into her friend, her forehead landing hard on his shoulder as he wraps his arms around her. Hidden in his shirt, she lets it all out, all the fear and uncertainty and panic she’d been holding back for JJ’s sake. For a singular moment, she falls apart. 

John B doesn’t flinch, just holds her, and she focuses on his warmth, his colors smudges of red and orange and brown around the edges of her vision, compassion and concern and the deepest, kindest love she’s ever felt. That’s the thing about John B -- he loves so fully and deeply, with every fiber of his being. It’s the reason he’s always tagging along, even when he doesn’t know what’s going on, the reason that he accepted Wheezie so readily, the reason he barely blinked when JJ and Kiara got their powers. To him, it’s simple. They’re his friends -- his  _ family _ \-- he loves them, and he’d do anything for them. He isn’t sure exactly why Kiara is crying, but he doesn’t expect an explanation, or a justification, or anything at all. She’s his best friend, and he loves her, and that’s all that matters. His simple, boundless loyalty feels like a lifeline tying her to earth, his friendship steady ground beneath her feet. There are so many things changing, too many things, but always, after everything, She and her friends will have each other. 

Kiara draws away from him as footsteps in the hallway signal JJ’s return, and she wipes at her eyes as John B leaves a reassuring arm around her shoulders, his hand rubbing comfortingly up and down her arm. The instant before JJ enters the kitchen, Kiara looks at Pope, who stands with his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders rolled forward, like he has to physically hold himself back from going to her. He’s afraid, still, of what she might find in his head. Or so she thinks, until he steps to her other side, and picks up her hand. 

Pope is a million shades of green, soothing grays and deep, certain blacks layered underneath, complete and cohesive and sure. He’s evergreen, eternal and unmoving, dependable, expected. As his slender fingers wrap around hers, their palms meet, and an apology echoes so loudly in his mind she almost accepts it out loud. He  _ was _ afraid -- until he’d put his hands over hers to stem JJ’s blood and in the contact in that frenzied, terrified moment, felt so immeasurably seen. Pope puts up a front -- she knows he does -- and he’s scared to let people behind it, anxious that they might see the mess he believes himself to be and judge him, or worse -- leave. But he saw her understanding of that, finally knew that she’s always seen behind the screen, and never minded. And then, she wore his courage as a shield, and stood, and he wasn’t afraid, anymore. 

Kiara stands between her friends, inexorably linked, grounded in the colors of the earth, and JJ steps forward, his hand coming up to hold her face. She presses her cheek into his palm, sinks into the three minds holding her up. JJ is bright yellows and deep blues, the sun and the ocean and the sky. He completes her surroundings, Pope and John B the earth, JJ water and light and the rest. Her boys. Her world. The rainbow that swirls in her mind is almost complete, and as the world flickers between reality and the phantasmic expression of her powers, she realizes that she finishes the picture, deep purples and kind, quiet lilacs lifting from her skin, dancing with the other auras that swirl around her. She sees what the boys see, the evening and the dawn and the deep, mysterious night. Rare and royal and gifted only to the most beautiful flowers. 

For a moment, she closes her eyes, lets the smile emerge from her chest and settle on her face. Science or fate or magic -- whatever it is that gives her color, gratitude for it settles in her bones. She takes a breath, inhaling love and loyalty and support in the small kitchen, and when she opens her eyes, all of the boys are looking at her. 

JJ’s thumb traces over her chin, lifting it playfully. “Ready?” he asks. He’s cleared away the patchwork panic, the shattering, re-forming mosaic of his fear and anger. He has boxed it up and put it away, and now he is clear skies and blazing sun, golden and perfect, smooth blue all at once. He is holding back the maelstrom with enormous effort, but he is sure, certain and strong. He wants to be himself, completely, when he brings down the Phantom. 

She nods. “Let’s get him.” 

* * *

When they get to the Maybank house, the sun is starting to set, and John B squints through the windshield as JJ hauls himself out of the van. 

“You don’t happen to have a plan?” Pope asks from the passenger seat. 

“C’mon man,” JJ retorts, his grin wide but forced and straining. “When have I ever had a plan?” He roots through the duffel bag he’d brought and pulls out a pistol, wincing when he stretches his shoulder back to tuck it in the back of his pants. 

“JJ --” Pope says, a warning in his voice, and JJ’s forced nonchalance is believable to exactly no one. 

“It’s fine,” JJ insists, looking decidedly un-fine. “Don’t wanna get caught off-guard again, that’s all.” His friends look at him, various forms of grief and incredulity written across their faces. He keeps his eyes on Kiara, who sits on the bench in the back of the van, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth. Her eyes are dark and intense, and even without touch, unspoken sentiments pass between them, unknowable to the others. She is warning him, and he is begging for her approval, for her support. 

Instead of saying anything, Kiara surges forward, kneeling on the floor of the van, and pulls JJ’s face to her own. She jerks him off-balance, and he braces his hand against the top of the van, the other resting on her waist. Her kiss is firm and stubborn, and she presses into him like she never wants to let go. Tears roll silently down her face and wet his cheeks, and together, they’re a sunrise and a sunset and the ocean, a pile of beach glass, a patchwork quilt, a thousand colors of grief and memory, of hope and fear and love. 

When he pulls away, he brushes one of her tears away with his thumb, and she nods, biting her lip once more. Slowly, he takes a step back, and then turns, and walks toward his father’s house. Pope and John B have matching expressions of shock on their faces, and Kiara drags the back of her hand across her nose, sniffling lightly and wiping hurriedly at her eyes. 

“Shut up,” she says. 

None of the three teenagers move as they watch their friend walk across the debris-strewn lawn, false confidence in his straight back and square shoulders, the only clue to his apprehension in the way his fists shake and flex at his sides. Kiara sinks down to sit on her heels, her hands curled in her lap, biting so hard on her lip her jaw trembles. Everything in her screams to follow him, to not let him go through this alone. But somewhere along the line, this became  _ his _ fight and his fight alone. He has to bring down the mythical figure that stole his family, has to uncover the broken man underneath the legend, the one that somewhere, might still be his father. 

About ten yards from the front door, JJ plants his feet, takes a deep breath, and shouts into the still, afternoon air. 

“ _ PHANTOM!” _

The voice that rings over the yard is not that of a scared, young boy, but a hero, a conquerer, a man of strength and courage and resolve. The sound raises goosebumps on her skin, and she inhales, straightening her spine and sitting in the realization of just how powerful JJ really is. Silence hangs over the grass and weeds, the trees themselves holding their breath in respect, in awe of the transformation of the boy they raised beneath their branches. The air in Kiara’s chest feels frozen, too big and stuck, and she knows JJ’s must feel the same. There is nothing more she wants in this moment than to be by his side. Her instinct to be next to him and her understanding that he has to do this alone war ceaselessly in her head.

The silence is broken by the screen door slamming open, bullets already flying as the Phantom -- as  _ Luke _ \-- storms outside. 

Kiara’s reaction is automatic. “Oh  _ fuck _ no,” she says, surprisingly calm, and launches herself from the back of the van, throwing up her hands as she races toward the fight. She stops just a few yards short, the bullets hanging in the air a few feet from JJ’s chest. JJ himself hasn’t moved, hasn’t even flinched, his resolve solid in the way he holds firm. 

Luke stops, his mouth hanging open, and lowers his gun. “How --” he starts, but he doesn’t have time to finish before his son is striding forward, landing a solid right hook across his father’s face. She can tell he didn’t put any extraordinary strength behind the punch because Luke is still standing. Stumbling, and dazed, but not out cold on the ground. Honos didn’t show up to this fight. This is just JJ, finally taking his revenge. There is no uncertainty in his movements, no qualms in the way he strikes again and again. Luke attempts to fight back, but it’s almost useless against JJ’s heightened reflexes, impossible to suppress. He’s holding back his strength, but he can’t stop the way he blocks every single one of his father’s attempts to hit back. 

She feels almost useless, anxious and tense, her ankles itching in the tall grass. She wants to help, but, as before, the war in her mind has returned. Besides, JJ has the fight well in hand, and she thinks it’s steely, cold resolve that drives him. At least, until he hesitates. He has his dad backed up against a car, one hand around his neck, the other in a fist, arm quivering with a held punch. Kiara takes a step, just one, and, as if he can feel her behind him, JJ sobs. It’s a broken sound, terrified and so very young. 

Stunned, Luke releases his grip on JJ’s wrist, reaching up and pushing up his son’s mask. Tears run down JJ’s face, his lips pressed together in vain effort of holding them back, eyes full and shattered and falling. 

Luke’s voice is raspy and thick, his eyes, the same crystal-blue as JJ’s, cloudy and haunted. 

“Son?” 

It’s the wrong thing. Kiara doesn’t think there’s a right one. The word seems to light a fire in JJ’s chest, and he  _ roars _ , a vengeful scream that echoes like it emanated from hell itself. Grabbing the front of his father’s shirt, JJ hurls him across the yard, and he’s not holding back, not anymore. Luke flies through the air, and Kiara can  _ hear _ the breath leave his lungs when he hits the ground. 

JJ stalks toward Luke with all the grace and strength of a vicious predator, snarling obscenities and accusations with so much anger, she barely recognizes his voice. Fear keeps her frozen, fear of what might happen if she puts herself in this fight, fear of JJ himself. Neighbors have gathered now, drawn out by the gunshots and the noise. Distantly, Kiara wonders if someone’s called the police. Given how deep they are in the Cut, it’s unlikely. And besides, even if the police  _ have _ been called, they’ll be slow to come, especially to this address. 

“Honos!” she shouts, still yards away, desperate for him to come back to himself, to stop. “HONOS!!” Her voice cracks, terror and dread and all the other evil things that wake to watch violence. JJ doesn’t stop, just careens towards his father, out-of-control, a victim of his own anger. 

“You gave me  _ nothing _ !!” He shouts. Sweat rolls down the side of his face, the veins in his forehead prominent, blood dripping from a busted lip. “Nothing but a  _ shitty life _ !!” His knees hit the ground on either side of his father’s body, and Luke is still winded, helpless to the attack that’s coming. “All you ever did --” JJ yells, one hand fisted in his father’s sweat-stained tank top. He raises his fist again, and the blow is a sickening crack across Luke’s face. JJ is losing control, and she’s moving before she realizes it.

“Was try and make me --” another punch. “ _ Afraid  _ of you!!” He rears back again, and she’s close enough to see his eyes, and they are wild, unfamiliar and unhinged. He raises his fist one more time. “I’m not afraid of you anymore.” 

It’s a death knell. Kiara knows that this time, he will not stop. He’s never given in like this, never surrendered so completely to the monster his father made him afraid of, the monster his father became. It tears at her, clawing at her skin and snapping at her hair. She will not let it win. 

“ _ JJ !!” _ She screams as she reaches him. 

Finally, blessedly, he stops.

The world hurtles to a standstill around them, like time itself has held its breath. Her chest heaves, breath exploding and melting, sublimating into the air. The wind catches her curls, blowing loose tendrils around her face. His face turns upwards, shattered as he crashes back into his body, tearstained and ashamed and scared. Their eyes lock, earth and sky, sun and moon. Neither can see anything else, fear and anger meeting like long-forgotten gods reuniting after centuries. The setting sun falls across JJ’s face, unforgiving in its demand for the revelation of truth. Disbelief settles in both young bodies, and slowly, Kiara shakes her head. For the first time, she reaches for his mind without the facilitation of touch, and somehow, even as it storms, finds it waiting. 

_ Not like this. _

Underneath him, Luke groans, half-unconscious, and Kiara’s eyes dart from JJ’s fist to his father, gasping on the ground. In one horrible moment, Honos -- JJ -- realizes what he’s done. Sobbing, he falls back, scrambling on his hands away from the prone body. Luke turns on his side, coughing, curled around his injuries, and Kiara drops to her knees beside JJ. 

Without hesitation, she throws her arms around him, her first and only thought to put a boundary around the pain. There is no color in the world she finds inside his head. Even in the bright, early evening, JJ’s thoughts are black, charred, burned to rubble by the fire that had raged so furiously through him. Devastation reigns, bottomless and consuming. This is what has been lurking down those hallways in his mind. This is what threatened along the edges, even in the most golden of afternoons. This darkness, this horrible void. Memories glint in the ash, horrible things, twisted and misshapen. This is where he would retreat, when the fights turned physical and he could hear his mother’s body slamming into cabinets, when his father’s raised voice became synonymous with bruises and aching bones. This deep, empty, burned place, where there was nothing left to set aflame. 

After a childhood spent here, JJ believes this is where he belongs.

The shock of it takes the air from her lungs, expanding in her chest until it threatens to consume her, as well, and she knows what she has to do. With her arms clasped behind his shoulders, her cheek pressed to his forehead, she closes her eyes, and opens the gates between their minds, knocks down every wall she’s ever built between them, lets him in, fully and truly, throws open all the doors and lets the light shine on all the worst moments, all the secrets she’s been keeping. 

At the center of it all is the feelings Kiara carries for him, the devotion, the deep, blood-red of her loyalty, the shining pink of adoration and the impossible, indescribable, all-encompassing love.  _ Please _ , she begs.  _ Please, I love you _ . She bites her lip, unable to determine his reaction as her own thoughts explode around her, a supernova in the space they share. 

_ Please _ .  _ Let’s do this together. I love you _ . 

She shows him John B and Pope, their grounding forces, the clay tones of John B’s unwavering allegiance, his faith in them, his assurance that nothing will ever tear them apart, the deep green of Pope’s understanding, his careful assessments that always end in his decision to stay, logic be damned. She does what he always does for her, showing him the sunlit afternoons and campfire evenings and TV nights, the salt spray of the bow of the  _ Pogue _ , the smell of bonfire smoke, the sweet burn of cheap vodka and the laughs it ignites. She invites him into the way she sees him, impossibly strong and shining gold, shares the way he makes her stomach trip and the fire of his fingers trailing across her skin. 

_ Please.  _

_ I love you _ . 

Slowly, his arms come up to hold her. Her body buckles against his, her clear blue relief running over him like cool water. Through the bond, his words echo back. 

_ Thank you.  _

She pulls back, smoothing her hand over his forehead, pushing away sweat and dark-gold locks of hair. Apologies reverberate in his eyes, all of them unneeded. The mirror has shattered, the way he looked at his father and saw himself cast into the fire of the sunset, finally, blessedly burning. Slowly, cautiously, he tips forward, and she meets him, lips pressed together with relief, a kiss filled with questions of forgiveness and the inevitable answer. One of his hands comes up to hold her face, and his palm against her cheek shakes with reverence. 

_ I love you, too _ . 

* * *

After, Kiara helps JJ back to the van, and Pope and John B don bandanas over the bottom of their faces and cross the yard. After, they tie up a dazed and muttering Luke, leave him propped up on the porch with a piece of paper taped to his chest, words scrawled in John B’s hurried handwriting. 

_ ASK ME ABOUT THE PHANTOM _

The cops come too late, just like Kiara knew they would, and by the time they get there, the kids are gone, already on their way back to the Chateau. Silence sits in the rattling old van, and JJ sits with his back to Kiara’s chest, his eyes closed, head heavy and hanging. None of the others say anything, even though Kiara can see them shooting glances into the back through the rearview mirror. At some point, Pope looks up, and she lifts her chin from JJ’s shoulder and gives him a sad semblance of a smile. She’s tired. They’re all tired. She doesn’t want to try and explain it all, not now, and she hopes that this is enough. 

Quietly, Pope smiles back. 

It’s two weeks before the police release anything about the Phantom’s arrest. By that point, they have the pictures from the office developed and Wheezie anonymously mails in an enormous envelope with all of their research and findings. Unbeknownst to any of the others, she’d scrawled a message across the front, using John B’s sharpies. 

‘ _ YOU’RE WELCOME’  _ it had said, and then, ‘ _ signed, Honos and Veritas _ ’ 

They celebrate the arrest and the proceeding trial with a bonfire in the backyard and unholy amounts of junk food. Big John had very conveniently left out a rack of PBR, a handle of jack, and a twenty for pizza on the kitchen table. When all eyes turn to John B, he shrugs. 

“I didn’t tell him,” he insists. “But my dad is practically psychic. He knows about everything on this island, at some point.” 

Faintly, Kiara remembers the way Big John stopped her as she left to patrol the night they saved Wheezie, the night that started everything. Something about the look on his face suggested he knew more about what was going on -- or perhaps what was about to happen -- that he had let her believe. She takes the can that Pope passes her, his excitement and relief a pale green as their fingers brush. He’s not hypervigilant about such things anymore, doesn’t worry about bare skin or standing too close. It’s the release of a burden neither of them knew they were holding. Popping the top, she starts to wonder if she and JJ weren’t the only ones affected by the explosion that night at the beach. 

“As long as he doesn’t snitch,” JJ says flippantly, cracking the seal on the handle. “Free booze is free booze, right?” 

He gets a cheer for that.

“I wanted to put ‘and the chorus’ on it,” Wheezie explains as they all sit around the fire in the backyard. They’re talking about the envelope again, complimenting Wheezie’s streak of genius in the compilation of it. A hideously fluffy purple blanket covers her legs, and she turns a marshmallow thoughtfully over the fire. “But that seemed a little pretentious.” 

“The chorus?” JJ asks. He’s sitting at Kiara’s feet, his torso tucked between her legs. His hair is a spiky, fluffy mess, because she’s tipsy and she can’t stop touching him, running her fingers through it over and over again. 

(There hadn’t been a conversation about it, not really. John B and Pope hadn’t even had the balls to ask. It was Wheezie, who’d taken a look at their joined hands one afternoon and just sighed; “oh fucking  _ finally.  _ Does this mean I can call you Mom and Dad, now?” The answer had been a very vehement, immediate, and resounding  _ no _ .)

“Like in the old plays,” Wheezie explains, unfazed as her marshmallow bursts into flame. “The ensemble would walk around just saying what everyone was thinking, so the audience wouldn’t have to guess.” She jerks her head towards John B and Pope. “That’s us!” 

“That was a Greek thing,” Pope points out, barely sitting up in any sense of the word, his head resting on the back of his camp chair, fiddling with the label of a bottle between his palms. “Honos and Veritas are Roman names.” His eyes are heavy-lidded and relaxed, and Kiara feels grateful that he’s finally letting himself unwind. Pope drinks much less than the rest of them, but she’s glad he’s allowed this moment of celebration, a sort of unleashing of youth. 

Wheezie points her flaming marshmallow at him. “Don’t kill my vibe,” she says, very seriously. 

The sentiment is ruined when the blackened thing falls off the roasting stick and into the fire, and everyone laughs, the sound echoing upward with the sparks that drift into the dark, defiant and glowing. There are no extraneous colors tonight, no clouds floating over her vision or ribbons of thought curling around her mind. Touching JJ just makes the world sharper, the fire brighter, the joy and warmth twice as strong as she experiences it not only from her own point of view, but his as well. 

Wheezie yells that it’s Pope’s fault and gets up from her chair, brandishing the roasting fork like a sword. Not to be outmatched, he picks up one as well and a duel commences, everyone laughing uproariously as John B records the entire thing on his phone. Wheezie takes off to chase Pope across the yard, and John B follows, the shaky-handed camera man. Sighing, Kiara leans over, resting her cheek on the top of her boyfriend’s head, closing her eyes and drinking in the smell of woodsmoke and salt marsh and JJ himself. Her arms fall around his neck, her hands clasped on his chest, and his palms lay flat against her forearms, his thumbs smoothing back and forth over her skin. 

“Kie?” he prompts. 

“Mmm?” she responds, hazy and liquid, drifting in the warmth of the fire and the night. 

“Did you really mean it?” he asks. She doesn’t have to inquire after what he means. Slowly, she lets herself sink past their thin veil of separation and into his mind, his olive-green doubt the slightest of mists obscuring the golden light that has become so central to his being. Lifting her head, her hands come up to trail over his face, and she tips it back so he can look at her. 

“Of course I did,” she reassures him, and his eyes fall closed, his head dropping back into her lap. For a moment, they’re silent, Kiara tracing her fingers over his features, brushing the golden hair from his forehead, admiring the way the firelight flickers over his defined features. He is a masterpiece, this boy, carved out of iron and flame-wrought into tempered steel. Somehow, after all the turmoil, all the brimstone and hellfire and pain, he is still loyal, still soft and kind. He is still determined to be a cosmic, unstoppable force for good. 

As it always does, JJ’s mind clouds, and she can feel it as well as see it in the way a wrinkle forms between his eyebrows. Smiling slightly to herself, she traces her index finger over the small space, the muscle relaxing only slightly. 

“So,” he starts, and she almost chuckles. This is her best friend, her boy, this mind that never stops, that spins itself into trouble she has to pull them back out of. “What does this mean?” He doesn’t see the confusion on her face, his eyes still closed, but she gives just as much as she reads now, with him, and the reddish-lavender tint gives it away. “For Honos and Veritas, I mean.” His apprehension is a sick yellow-brown, and her chest aches at the thought of her potential reaction making him feel this way. 

Her fingers linger near his temple, and he recognizes her unspoken request, opening his eyes. Even though she’s looked into them a million times before, sometimes, they still make her catch her breath. They’re the same color as the night sky in the low light, the ocean on a stormy day, a deep, impossible blue, understanding and intricate, somehow an impossible well of perfect truth. 

“Maybe we can just be JJ and Kiara for a while,” she offers, and almost sighs aloud in the warm relief that rushes over both of them. “Sound good?” He tilts his chin up, and she smiles as she lowers her face to his request. The kiss is soft and short, and his eyes linger closed and she pulls away, tracing her fingertip up the bridge of his nose. A satisfied, quiet grin settles on his face, the kind that doesn’t know it’s there. 

His eyes are full of stars when they meet hers. 

“Sounds good.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI I HOPE THIS WAS OKAY PLEASE TELL ME WHAT BITS U LIKED

**Author's Note:**

> wHATEVER COULD HAPPEN NEXT  
> I DON'T KNOW!!!  
> I mean I kind of do  
> a little bit  
> (help) 
> 
> [tumblr](https://homebody-nobody.tumblr.com/)  
> Thanks to [katie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaatiekinss/pseuds/kaatiekinss) and [Ana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rcsales/pseuds/rcsales) for beta'ing and ofc the [jiara gc](https://hvitstark.tumblr.com/gcshenanigans) for all their ideas, help, and support  
> don't forget to tip ur fic writers  
> (the tips are comments)


End file.
